


The Hands of Nephilim

by Arcafira



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demon Hunters, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Aziraphale Has a Praise Kink (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Dom Crowley (Good Omens), Dubious Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Incubus/Succubus Crowley (Good Omens), Ineffable Wives | Female Aziraphale/Female Crowley (Good Omens), Light Bondage, Light Dom/sub, Masturbation, Non-Graphic Descriptions of Blood, Oral Sex, Porn With Plot, Processing Trauma, Self-Harm, Sexual Repression, a dom that giggles, but she's kind of soft about it, crowley is instagram famous, dark!Gabriel, discussions of consent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:55:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26270737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcafira/pseuds/Arcafira
Summary: Descendants of the Nephilim, Aziraphine’s family has hunted demons for millennia. When a seemingly routine hunt goes wrong and Aziraphine witnesses the near-death of her sister Uriel, it’s the final push she needs to leave her oppressive family and make a life of her own. She’s been living happily as a bookseller in the city for two years when her old life returns to haunt her in the form of a reluctant succubus named Crowley. Plans are afoot, and the demons expect Crowley to help them weaken the family of Nephilim who’ve threatened them for ages.Succubi don’t fall in love, especially not with their targets, but Crowley begins to think that whatever she feels for Aziraphine might be worth defying Hell for.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 32
Kudos: 66





	1. A Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning for thoughts about and brief description of self harm in chapters one and two. I've tried only to include what's necessary to understand Aziraphine fighting against the beliefs of her abusive family to grow into a place of self-love and independence. These scenes are followed by healing and support. Please take care of yourselves. Additional spoiler-y content warning for chapter one: there's a knife in a sexual scene, but it's covered and there's no injury. 
> 
> I've tagged this as dubcon because Crowley has powers of seduction and influence as a succubus. Aziraphine is aware of when she's being influenced, and Crowley gives her space to choose if and when she wants to engage in anything sexual. For the first three chapters, Aziraphine is still dealing with internalized guilt over her sexual desires and what it means for her as a Nephilim. She wants to have sex but struggles with intense shame after. Crowley provides support and comfort.
> 
> I've tried to thoroughly warn for everything I could think of, but please let me know if there's anything else that should be tagged or noted.

Aziraphine knows the difference between nightmares and hauntings, and this is a haunting. She dreams of amber eyes, pupils like the dangerous edge of a knife. They watch her. She startles awake to a weight atop the blanket, just beside her. Before her mind is fully freed from the dizzying influence of the dream, it’s gone, as if it were only a trick of sleep. Aziraphine knows better. She throws out her hand, finds lingering warmth; clicks on the bedside lamp and discovers the distinct impression of a body.

In an instant, she’s out of bed. Sheets tangle around her ankles. She stumbles, but fear has made her a primal creature. She does not fall. Dulled senses flare to life, an aura of ethereal light ghosting across her skin as a weak shield. Her heart speeds. She hugs herself, digging her fingers into the soft flesh at her sides as she backs away from the bed. There’s no smoke or fire, but the air stings her eyes and dries her throat. Her breath sounds harsh in the empty room, but she’s certain she’s only recently alone.

* * *

Times like this make her wish she was fully human, that she could brush off such an encounter as the result of too many horror novels and simple nightmares. She had thought, naively, that if she left that world alone, it would not come for her. She had thought she could set aside her mother’s teachings like human children leave behind their parents’ beliefs. But the things her mother had taught her extended beyond belief.

In the early morning gloom, she clasps her shaking hands and walks the perimeter of her small studio apartment, laying down wards as she goes. That done, she pulls her bed away from the wall just enough to chalk a protective circle onto the old wood floor around its frame. Her mind blanks on the last of the appropriate sigils. She rummages past quilts and bookbinding projects to the bottom of an old trunk to retrieve an even older book. It’s heavy in her hands and not just because of its comprehensive length. Its weight recalls hours of solitary study in the west wing of her childhood home, candlelit rituals in her parents’ cellar, the burden of needing to don a cloak of protection. Her fingers find the appropriate page as if from muscle memory. The pages are fragile and yellowed but will never crumble. The ink is ancient but will not fade. The diagram she’s looking for encompasses the two-page spread, margin notes detailing the effect of each mark. She tries not to think about the meaning, copies the shapes as if they are a formula she doesn’t understand from an advanced mathematics text. Once complete, the circle surges with pale light. Aziraphine sets the chalk and book aside and presses her hands to the circle to seal it. It pulses once, then fades back to what appears to be mundane chalk. She hopes not to see its light again, dreads what its reactivation would mean.

Best to go about the day as usual, she thinks. Better than watching her wards all day. Better than remembering those eyes. She hopes the normalcy of her work routine will soothe her, tire her so that she can fall easily into a restful sleep later that night.

Autumn sunrise is just beginning to brighten the room. She has plenty of time before opening hours and so takes a long bath, tries to read a paperback novel as she soaks but feels only the heavy tome fatiguing her hands. The words on the page shift and swim and rearrange their lines into warding sigils. Dazed, she watches them. A splash startles her back to reality. The sigils scatter and she is suddenly watching her paperback sink under a froth of bubbles. She bites back a curse and retrieves it, knowing it’s ruined. She’s never damaged a book, not like this, and it’s enough to sour the rest of her plans for a relaxing morning. She splashes out of the bath, drains the water, and dries in an uncharacteristic hurry.

Her studio, though small, is usually a haven. A wall of shelves holds her personal book collection, though some of it has started to clutter the nearby floor in stacks. Her small kitchenette is stocked with an impressive tea and wine collection that she likes to indulge after a day in the shop. She has more soft cushions and chairs than is necessary for a studio with one occupant. But despite the new morning light and the reliable heat of the radiator, the space has lost its usual cozy charm. She tries not to look at the chalk circle as she goes to the kitchen for a cup of tea. While it’s brewing, she combs her riot of blond curls and dons a taupe blazer with a soft blue sweater underneath. Sensible wool trousers complete her usual look. She takes herself and her tea down the rear stairway to open the bookshop.

Two years ago, Aziraphine had taken a risk on renting the space, but now she couldn’t imagine her shop outside of the historic downtown district. She’d fallen instantly in love with the wood floors and exposed brick walls, the stamped metal ceilings with their careful filigree patterns. She rented the small studio above and thought she was finally seizing her dream. Demon-hunter-turned-bookseller sounded more dramatic than it was and wasn’t how Aziraphine thought of herself. She was simply another person escaping another oppressive family. She had made a home here, and she was happy. Her old life had not intruded much until now.

She doesn’t realize how long she’s been standing at the bookshop window until a flash of movement catches her eye. The coffee shop across the street is opening, door swinging open and lights flicking on. Her tea’s gone cold in her hands. She sets it down on the counter a bit too hard, locks up the shop, and goes across the street for a coffee.

* * *

A rush of pleasure jolts her from sleep, the last of a cry catching in her throat. The circle around her bed burns bright white, blindingly so. But there is a shape, dark and looming above her, golden eyes sharp in the light. She cannot process the clash of pleasure and terror. _Succubus_ , her mind supplies through a tumult of thoughts even as her body is carried away in a wash of sensation. She thinks, blearily, that she will drown and she will enjoy it.

* * *

She wakes with a gasp, her clothes soaked through with sweat and arousal. She stumbles out of bed. Doesn’t register the cool wood underfoot or the early morning birdsong at her window. She strips out of her clothes, flees to the bathroom, and slams the door behind her. Anything to be away from that room and the evidence of demonic haunting. She showers until her skin is red and shuts off the tap only after the water turns cold. She curls into the solidity of the tub and makes herself think.

She has seen her siblings maimed on the hunt. She has seen how possession can break a mind. She has watched her sister’s months-long recovery into a personality that was never the same as the old. She was prepared for all those eventualities to come for her, but not this. This is an invasion. A violation she can’t comprehend.

The world is wrong when she emerges. The fact that everything appears the same makes it more wrong. She picks her clothes from the floor, tosses them in the wash. Rips off the bedclothes and throws them in after. Habit steers her to the kitchenette and the promise of a warm cup of tea. She finds it waiting for her, steaming in a delicate china cup and saucer she’s never owned, let alone seen in her life. She doesn’t expect the scream that rips from her, doesn’t expect to sweep the innocently offending thing into the sink where it splashes and shatters. So solid. And real. The corner of the counter bites hard into her hip as she backs away.

Before she can process what she’s doing, she’s ripping clothes out of the closet and tripping down the back stairs. The air is crisp and she’s neglected a coat in her haste. People hurrying to their jobs downtown eye her but say nothing. Only when something sharp stabs into her foot does she realizes she neglected shoes as well. Perhaps someone who recognizes her calls out, but she doesn’t hear them. She is walking. She is moving. She is getting away.

Eventually, she starts to feel the cold because her body numbs and the tips of her fingers purple. She looks at them wonderingly, tries to squeeze the color from the flesh. These are her hands, she recognizes, but they feel separate from her and her concerns—their manicure frivolous, the nails too brittle against what threatens her.

Her body returns her home. She transfers her laundry to the dryer without feeling it. She inspects the circle and finds it complete and unsmudged. She checks the sink and finds it empty. Where the teacup once sat, she finds two dainty truffles. One dark chocolate, one milk. She breathes, takes one in hand, peels away the paper, takes a bite. It is as solid and real as the teacup and creamy as it dissolves on her tongue. She waits for something to happen. Nothing does. She eats the rest of the first, leaves the second. Her body tingles with the return of heat but nothing more.

With the dryer humming in the background, she takes a blanket from the chest and curls up to sleep on the bare mattress.

* * *

They are mere nightmares this time, she knows. Each time she startles awake, she is comfortingly alone in the room. She falls into fitful sleep again and dreams of the eyes.

The sun is high when she wakes this time. She stares at the ceiling and watches the light change. A cup of steaming tea on her bedside table never cools. She studies the china cup’s painted flowers, returns her eyes to the ceiling.

“Is this—” she realizes “—an apology?”

She takes the tea in shaking hands, clattering the china together. All she’s had to eat, she recalls, is the truffle. A single infernal truffle.

The tea is mildly sweetened and floral. Herbal, she identifies. She burns her tongue on it, drinks it in a sloppy haste, and falls back into a restless sleep.

Daylight seems the same when she regains consciousness. She’s not sure how long she’s existed like this, on poor sleep and demon treats. The tea at her bedside has been refilled. Three truffles wait in a delicate saucer. She peels away their papers, eats them together in a single bite—raspberry and almond and mint mingling on her tongue—and downs the tea in two gulps. Outside her window, the sky is pale and bright. She wanders over to it, floats, exists beyond her body.

A shrill noise cuts through her mental haze.

She finds her phone buzzing a frenzy on the kitchen counter and stares at its screen, struggling to process letters into meaning. Uriel. Her sister. Her sister is calling her—for the first time in a year. She accepts the call and raises the phone carefully to her ear.

“Aziraphine,” says a voice. Distant and familiar. They wait.

She makes her tongue move. “Hello?” she says politely and barely stops herself from rattling off _you’ve reached A. Z. Fell Books. How may I help you?_

“Ana at the coffee shop says you haven’t opened recently. Said she saw you wandering around downtown looking confused and underdressed.”

“Ah,” she says, forcing a smile into her voice. “I’m just fine. A little—a little sick is all.”

“What day is it, Aziraphine?”

Her mind tries to trace back through her awakenings. Have two days passed? Three? “Friday, I suppose,” she tries. “Though I’ve been terribly busy inventorying and lost—”

“I’ve been trying your mobile all week, Aziraphine.”

She’s opening her mouth to speak when Uriel cuts her off.

“I’m outside your door now. Let me in.”

The call disconnects and Aziraphine is left staring at a wall of notifications she’d somehow not heard. Her battery would be dead if she’d not left the phone on the charger.

A fist pounding against her door startles her back into motion. Halfway to the door, she notices her rumpled clothes, her flattened curls. She thinks briefly of changing, but the knock comes again as if Uriel will threaten to break the door down next. She opens it.

“Fucking hell,” Uriel breathes at the sight of her and pushes her way inside. She is dressed, as always, in an impeccably tailored suit, and Aziraphine feels even more shabby beside her. Uriel’s gaze immediately lands on the circle in the center of the room, and she stops short. “Why didn’t you tell us,” she demands, and if anyone in her family can make a demand also sound gentle and concerned, it’s Uriel. “Why didn’t you come home?”

Aziraphine still feels like she’s floating just over her body, still feels outside of what’s happening to her. When she struggles to answer, Uriel closes the door and cups Aziraphine’s chin, forcing her to meet her gaze.

“What kind are they?” she asks. “What did they do to you?”

“She has golden eyes,” Aziraphine says, noting that this information is irrelevant as she says it. Eyes that would be beautiful if they weren’t terrifying, her mind unhelpfully supplies. “A succubus.”

Uriel inspects the circle and seems puzzled when she finds it correct and intact. “Succubi shouldn’t be able to break this.”

Aziraphine puts her head in her hands. Maybe, she thinks, she could finally cry.

Uriel’s voice is beside Aziraphine again. She hadn’t heard her cross the room. The floor usually creaks. “How many times have you seen her?”

“Twice.”

Uriel takes Aziraphine’s hands away from her face, holds them gently in her own. She meets Aziraphine’s gaze again, and ethereal light shines through her eyes. It shouldn’t startle Aziraphine but she’s not seen any of her family do this in years. “It doesn’t seem like she’s attempted to drain you,” Uriel decides eventually, and if she was baffled before, it’s obvious now. The cold light fades, and her eyes are their normal brown again. “Are you sure it’s not something else?”

“I know the difference between a demonic presence and a nightmare.” Aziraphine is so weary, she doesn’t even have the energy to be offended by the suggestion that she imagined the past week.

“Something’s happening, Aziraphine,” Uriel says, low and quiet as if she can keep a secret from whatever infernal forces might be listening in. “What’s happened to you is only a piece of it.” She hesitates before adding, “Won’t you come back home?”

At that, Aziraphine pulls away. “I can—I can figure it out.”

Uriel looks back at the useless circle, and it’s enough for Aziraphine to understand her point. She ignores it. “I’m not going back to Mom. What she did to you—”

“I recovered.”

“But you didn’t.”

“At least I’m not away in the city pretending that I don’t know the truth of what’s out there. Even when it comes for me. At least I’m fighting.”

Aziraphine draws a shaky breath, backs away. _I watched you die twice_ , she doesn’t say. _I watched the spirit break you._

Uriel must see the thoughts on her face because she changes her approach. “Have you eaten?”

“Tea and truffles,” she answers.

Uriel’s confusion returns.

“She apologized.”

“Who? Aziraphine, who?”

She can’t look at her sister when she says it. “The succubus.”

“No. No, Aziraphine, you’re coming back with me,” says Uriel, starting forward as if to grab Aziraphine.

“I won’t!” Aziraphine screams. _I watched you die twice. Twice, in that place_.

Silence falls heavy between them. Uriel reaches into the inside of her coat and withdraws a gleaming silver dagger. “It’s blessed,” she says even though they both know what it is. Uriel waits for Aziraphine to reject it. She has rejected all of their weapons and armor—every hunter’s tool—with the exception of the tome. When Aziraphine says nothing, Uriel sets it on the counter. Its ornate hilt gleams in the sunlight.

“Why don’t you get yourself cleaned up while I cook,” she offers.

Aziraphine nods, closes herself into the bathroom. A gentle clatter sounds from the kitchen as Uriel goes about opening cabinets and retrieving pots. Distantly, the practical part of Aziraphine’s mind remembers that she has nothing to cook, thinks that Uriel will need to go out for ingredients. She’s relieved by these mundane thoughts, this clarity, when she glimpses on the windowsill a fine china teacup and saucer that had not been there before.

* * *

Aziraphine spoons soup into her mouth but can’t say what its ingredients are or what it tastes like. Uriel watches her as if she’s a fragile thing, and Aziraphine wonders if this is how she herself looked at Uriel after the demon had taken her soul and crushed it, when she walked hollow-eyed through the great halls of their parents’ home. Uriel mercifully doesn’t interrogate Aziraphine’s lack of her usual enthusiasm for food.

When she leaves, she looks ready to make another case for Aziraphine to come with her, but instead she touches the dagger. “I’m sure you remember how,” she says simply.

Aziraphine nods.

“And—I understand why you left even if the others don’t,” Uriel adds.

Something in Aziraphine’s chest eases. “Thank you.”

“Please at least call me. To check in.” Uriel tries to offer a smile, but her gaze flicks to the dagger between them. Aziraphine braces for the look that sometimes crosses her, the evidence of what the demon attack left behind, but it doesn’t come. Not in this light.

* * *

She sleeps with the dagger under her pillow, one hand on its hilt, the other on its sheath, ready to pull it free. She waits, trying to feign sleep, but her entire body is tense with anticipation. Or at least, anticipation is what she’s chosen to name it. To acknowledge anything else feels like sabotage.

First, there’s the smell of smoke followed by heat and shadow. The light of the circle blazes to life, and Aziraphine tugs the blade free, thrusting upwards to bring its edge to bear against the form solidifying above her. Shadow melts from the figure like a clearing fog until a woman materializes from its depths, all pale skin and curling flame-red hair. And those golden eyes. Aziraphine knows, when she meets them, that she’s hesitated a beat too long.

The demon watches, makes no move. “I’ve never been threatened at knifepoint while trying to seduce someone. It’s quite sexy, if I’m honest.” She leans into the edge of the blade as if it’s a silly flirtation. The silver gleams bright against her neck. “I am sorry,” she says.

“Why are you doing this to me?” Aziraphine manages.

“Don’t take it personally. It’s just orders. A job.” The demon considers. “I’m sorry about the effects of my aura. I didn’t mean to do that the first time we met. I’ve toned it down for tonight.” She leans closer, and Aziraphine lets her, keeping the blade steady at her throat but not pushing back. Her training screams against it. She remembers what happened to Uriel. She remembers the price of offering softness to a demon. “You’re different from the others,” the demon offers. “I could like you. As much as a demon could like a human, a descendant of the warrior Nephilim.”

Aziraphine makes herself press the blade into the demon’s neck, a warning. The movement is slow and the pressure gentle. Against a human, it’d draw a trickle of blood. With a flick of her wrist, she could discorporate the demon and send her back to Hell. A blessed blade alone isn’t a mortal threat but is enough to banish them from the physical plane.

The demon chuckles. “That’s not what you want. I see what you want.”

“You don’t,” says Aziraphine.

“You wouldn’t have to do anything,” murmurs the demon. She reaches confidently for Aziraphine, heedless of the knife, and sweeps her thumb over the soft skin of her inner wrist, presses it into the bed. “Just let me. You deserve to feel good.”

“Please leave me,” whispers Aziraphine. The words are effort and she hates it. The dagger trembles in her grasp. She can’t breathe. If the demon asks again, she’ll break.

The demon’s brow creases as if in concern, as if her mission has suddenly become less fun. “Have it your way,” she says, the gentleness in her voice surprising Aziraphine. All lust and heat evaporating as if she’d merely been inhabiting a role. “But do me a favor.” She grasps Aziraphine’s knife-wielding hand, and she lets it also be pressed down into the bed. She’s pinned. The demon looms, and she’s suddenly hyperaware of her own exposed chest and neck, of the flecks of gold and amber and honey in the demon’s eyes. “Take your pleasure if you want it.” She flashes a fanged smile, but it feels more like one of a teasing friend than an infernal enemy. Then Aziraphine blinks, and the room is dark again, and the demon is gone.

* * *

Hot tea steams at her bedside in the morning. Beside it, three more truffles are artfully arranged on a saucer amid camellia blossoms. The hilt of the dagger is still a heavy, grounding weight in her hand. Aziraphine doesn’t understand.

No one as careless as she had been should survive a demonic encounter. No demon merely teases and flirts and vanishes without exacting a toll. But her mind and body are whole. She’s not even hungry.

She sheathes the dagger and spends the morning scrubbing away the chalk circle. It feels good to move her body after so much restless sleep. For the first time in days, her head feels clear. She pushes her bed back to its original place.

The tea and truffles still wait for her on the bedside table. Besides the flowers, there’s something different this time. She draws a slip of paper from beneath the saucer. _I’ll never take, only give_ , reads the sharp cursive.

_It doesn’t seem like she’s attempted to drain you_ , Uriel had said.

But when she reaches for the chocolates, her fingertips tingle. One practically gleams with demonic energy. It’s obvious that the demon has not tried to disguise it, knows that Aziraphine will easily sense it, wants her to sense it. An invitation.

Gingerly, she takes it between her thumb and forefinger, and there’s a spark at the first contact, their opposing energies bent on resisting each other.

_Take your pleasure if you want it_.

An apology. An invitation. A seduction.

She places it back among the camellias, gets ready for work, and takes the herbal tea down with her to the bookshop.

* * *

The shop is the same as always. Its mundane familiarity is shocking to Aziraphine. She walks among the shelves, running her hands across worn familiar spines and dragging her fingertips through a week’s worth of dust. When she finally flips the sign on the front door to _Open_ , Ana is across the street in an instant.

“Thank God you’re okay,” she says as soon as she’s through the door.

Aziraphine stares at her. Here is a human person. In the daylight. Speaking to her. The normal part of her registers that Ana is looking even witchier now that Halloween is nearing. On a normal day, she might have complemented her on her lovely lace blouse or impeccable makeup. By the time she’s thought all these things, she realizes she’s quite forgotten what Ana said and has simply been staring.

“You called . . . my emergency contact,” is not what she means to say first, but she does.

“Look, I know you don’t like your family and told me only to use it as a last resort thing, but— I was worried for you. You weren’t answering your phone or coming to your door. When I called to you on the street that day, you didn’t seem . . .” She trails off.

“No, it’s—It’s quite alright.” She looks down at the tea still cupped in her hands, its fragrant steam still rising pleasantly. Ana looks at it too, and Aziraphine suddenly wants to hide it away, as if it tells too much of what’s happened to her.

“Your sister said you were okay?” Ana tries again.

She nods. “Just had a, um. Stress, just stressed. Holiday season approaching, you know.”

Ana looks incredulous but lets her have it. “I’m just across the street if you ever need anything. If you want to talk.”

Aziraphine forces a smile. “Thank you, dear.”

She watches Ana until she disappears into the coffee shop again, then goes about opening the bookshop’s mail, thinking about the truffle all the while.

* * *

Her studio’s windows are both north-facing, and the buildings around her rise high. When she finally returns home in the evening, the light is a deep shaded red. She realizes she has not seen the sunset in days.

She doesn’t turn the lights on, takes her time putting away her shoes and blazer, needlessly straightens the things in the closet.

For the first time all day, she feels hungry.

Before ascending the stairs, she’d decided.

There’s the spark of energy again when she takes the chocolate in her hands. She rolls it between her fingers. So small. So ordinary. She presses it to her lips, and it warms her skin.

“I don’t even know your name,” she whispers to the empty room. “Would you trust someone like me with your name? The way I’ve trusted you with my body.”

The pressure of a shadow forms at her back. She moves to turn her head, but a hot hand against her cheek stops her. They stand together in the dark quiet, breathing.

“Crowley,” comes the whisper against her ear.

Aziraphine repeats the name in wonder. She has never simply asked and had a demon give their name.

“Now you have all you need to bind or banish me. If you wish. If you’re skilled enough, which I’ve no doubt you are, you could destroy me.”

“You know I’m Nephilim. Why tell me?”

Crowley’s shadow is hot at her back, a strange comfort in the chill of autumn. “That stays with me. For now.”

She vanishes, leaving a cool void in her absence. Aziraphine pushes the truffle into her mouth.

This one is dark. Bitter chocolate and black cherry chased by the metallic sting of blood. Her body prickles with warmth, and she gasps at a jolt of heat through her core. “Crowley,” she breathes on a shaky exhale. She suddenly needs to be free of her clothes, needs to feel her skin under her hands. When she’s stripped away every scrap of fabric, she lays back on the bed, blissfully unselfconscious of her arousal for the first time in her life. She cups her breasts and tests the sensation of her nipples, squeezing just to the edge of pain. Whatever moans or gasps come to her, she lets herself have them, lets herself breathe, lets herself feel. This isn’t artful. The influence that’s taken her doesn’t know delay or pace. It is hungry and it wants.

Her thighs are already slick with arousal, her flesh swollen and hot. She finds the point of pleasure with her fingers, massages into it. She gasps; her hips buck. _Crowley_. Amid the wash of pleasure, she is only dimly aware of the spreading dampness beneath her. This, in any other state of mind, would have elicited shame, then panic. She’d have sought immediate atonement. But here, under the demon’s spell, she is freed. Her body is her own, a new geography to explore. She tests the sensation of her fingers inside her, moans, spreads her thighs. Never in her life has she had this relationship to her body. She feels simultaneously sharp and fragile. Her flesh feels urgent, every point of her electrified. She wants something, needs something inside her. She fumbles for something on the bedside table and knocks the saucer to the floor. Its shatter seems distant, muffled; she doesn’t care. _Crowley_. Her hand lands on the sheathed dagger, and she grasps it, curls her fingers over the crossguard, thrusts its silver hilt into her. The flare of the pommel is delicious, the ridges of the rounded hilt exquisite. The metal is icy in comparison to her fevered body, and she gasps at the delicious shock. Thrust and pressure together bring her off. Her body tenses, relaxes, tenses. She cries out, feels loose and unspooled. The taste of blood on her tongue fades, settling her back into herself. She’s suddenly aware of the sheen of sweat on her body, the earthy scent of arousal in the air, the evidence of her orgasm on her hands.

For a moment, she’s frozen, shivery cold. Something leaden and heavy settles in her stomach. She registers the dagger, slippery wet in her hand.

Her vision blurs. She stands, hot desire replaced by something cold and automatic. She crunches across the china shards, and if they stab into her feet, she thinks she deserves it. From under the bathroom counter, she withdraws an ancient wooden box. It’s not something she’s had to touch in years, and the rattle of the implements inside brings her back home. The lid falls back, and there are tools for cutting and crushing, for bashing and bruising. Tools for returning one’s sense of discipline and self-control.

Hands are always the first offenders, and she will correct them first.

She chooses a heavy wooden paddle first, grips it tight in her right hand to poise over her left. She grips the edge of the counter and braces herself. For a breath, there’s peace. Then she brings it down over her knuckles hard and fast—just like her mother taught her. Once, twice—

A hot hand grips her wrist. Her vision swims with tears and pain. Through the blur, she can see the skin already broken open, blood pooling to the surface.

“Aziraphine.” The voice at her ear is harsh this time.

She chokes on a sob, tries to wrestle her arm free, but she is weak. She has always been weak and soft. Crowley presses her body into her back, wraps an arm securely around her middle.

“Oh, angel,” the endearment slips out on a breath against the back of her neck. “What they’ve done to you is worse than much of what we could.” She continues to hold Aziraphine’s wrist gently but firmly where she caught it mid-swing. Holds her _lovingly_ , some distant part of her brain supplies. She swats the thought away before it can fully bloom and overtake her chest like a weed.

Crowley kisses the nape of her neck, comes around to take the box and the paddle from her, and vanishes it all as if it never existed. Aziraphine can’t look at her. Crowley strokes her cheek, her dark claws nothing but a trace along her skin.

“Why?” she asks.

Aziraphine sniffs. “A weak body weakens the soul,” she recites from memory. “A weak soul is unfit for a warrior.”

“Desire isn’t weakness. It’s human,” whispers Crowley. “You’re—”

“Nephilim,” Aziraphine finishes with a bitter smile.

She registers the barest shake of Crowley’s head in the dark. The demon is here now, standing full and corporeal beside her. No haze of shadow. She could turn towards her, truly see her. Find her amber eyes. She doesn’t.

“Can I?” Crowley says, her hands outstretched towards her.

Aziraphine turns her face away, holds her left hand out for the demon to inspect. Crowley takes it carefully, raises it to her lips as if it is a sacred object, and kisses away the bruises forming under the skin. Aziraphine flexes her hand and finds it miracled painless. She almost says _thank you_.

“If I’d known—” Crowley starts.

“It’s nothing,” says Aziraphine. “I wanted it, wanted to feel good, I mean, but— It’s conditioning. The punishment is.”

Crowley waits, then says, “Every time?” The words are soft as if the suggestion of what they imply will break her.

Aziraphine swipes at her tears, faces the dark window. “It’s necessary. To resist temptation. If we’re to survive the hunt.”

“Did you even want to be a hunter?”

“Please,” Aziraphine breathes. “Crowley.”

“I’m sorry. I’m only angry for you.”

The room feels suddenly too small for their silence.

Aziraphine tries to push past Crowley for the door but hisses at the sudden reminder of the shards in her feet.

“Let me,” Crowley offers again, moving towards Aziraphine as if she’s an injured animal. She scoops her easily into her arms and carries her back to bed. The dagger and broken saucer are both gone, to Aziraphine’s relief. The bed is cleaned and its blankets straightened. Crowley settles her on the edge of the bed and kneels in front of her before smoothing her hands over her feet. As before with her hand, the pain is suddenly gone and the flesh healed.

They stay like that for a moment, with Crowley bowed at Aziraphine’s feet. The demon wears a luxurious drape of black fabric and, but for her flame of red hair, would blend into the deepening shadows.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Thinks. “I need to be more careful with you.”

“Why are you doing this?” Aziraphine asks again.

Crowley shakes her head. “Dangerous, to entrust that information to a Nephilim.” She smiles a crooked smile up at her.

“But I already know your name.”

“Destroying me”—Crowley shrugs—“I’m only a small piece of all this. I can be replaced.”

“Did you even want this?” Aziraphine asks, turning Crowley’s earlier question to her back on the demon.

Crowley notices, chuckles, turns the full gleam of her amber gaze on Aziraphine. “No. But it’s too late for me.” She stands suddenly. “Would you like a massage? Would that be . . . comforting?”

Aziraphine sniffs, nods.

The scents of bergamot and rose and other flowers Aziraphine can’t quite identify perfume the air as Crowley massages scented oil into her back. She doesn’t know where she got the massage oil, but she supposes it works the same as the tea and truffles, simply springing into being based on Crowley’s imagination. The press of her hands feels practiced, and Aziraphine eventually relaxes into the sensation. The demon is careful to avoid touching her in a way that might feel sexual, and Aziraphine turns her face into the pillow and cries silently. She has never had such gentleness enacted upon her body. This kindness, she thinks, will be her true downfall. A soft temptation with a featherlight fall.


	2. An Enemy in Name Only

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boundaries are navigated and discoveries made.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stick with me while I indulge all my favorite vampire tropes?

She’s vaguely aware of Crowley’s presence through the night. The demon keeps a respectful distance from the bed as if she’s realized something and made a decision she hasn’t shared with Aziraphine. Aziraphine tosses and turns, thinks foggily of questions she wants to ask once she’s conscious enough to form them coherently. She doesn’t know if she dreams the demon’s eyes or simply catches Crowley looking at her during brief snatches of waking.

Exhaustion still weighs on her when she finally rouses sometime in the late morning, but she knows Crowley, for once, had nothing to do with her poor sleep. When her eyes finally focus, she spies Crowley across the room with her heavy edition of Shakespeare’s collected works cradled in her arms. The demon’s eyes are intent on the page, and she’s settled into an easy sprawl, one leg kicked over the arm of the chair, an arm resting on its back. Her mouth twitches in a smile.

Aziraphine is struck again by the wonder of her. What an innocent picture. What a _normal_ picture, if not for the anachronistic black robes. Her chest fills with some emotion. Something warm and soft and comforting.

When she sits up in bed, Crowley’s gaze is immediately on her. The demon stammers, hefts the book shut, and rockets to her feet as if she’s been caught in the act of something more nefarious than perusing classic literature.

“Which one is your favorite?” Aziraphine asks, and it feels so easy. When has she had a casual, friendly conversation outside of Ana? She moved away to start a human life, yes, but she’s hardly made an effort to reach out to anyone.

“Not much of a reader,” Crowley answers. She shifts the book in her arms as if she doesn’t know what to do with it. “Just like to reread the funny ones. On occasion.”

A realization clicks in Aziraphine’s mind for the first time. She pushes her blankets back, leans forward. This is the only time her mind has been clear in Crowley’s presence, and it’s like she’s truly hearing her for the first time.

“Are you English?” she blurts.

“Because I like Shakespeare?”

Now it’s Aziraphine’s turn to be confused. “No. Your accent.”

“Demons don’t have nationalities?” There’s the upturn of a question in her statement. “I guess this is just what I settled on. For when I’m speaking English, anyway.”

Aziraphine runs her hands through her sleep-mussed curls. These are not the questions she’d wanted to ask. Something about the sunlight and the way Crowley’d been sitting there, an easy picture of domesticity. It’s a warmth she’s dreamed of but never had. A life she’s always wanted.

“You wear desire beautifully,” Crowley says.

“I don’t . . .”

She seems to look through her. Her eyebrows lift. “I can see,” she says, “everything you want.” It’s an unthreatening fact. The demon tilts her head as if trying to get a better view of something, steps forward.

Aziraphine leans away, and Crowley blinks, stops.

“I’m sorry.” She looks down at Shakespeare’s collected works. “I’m invasive. It’s my job. I’ve never had reason not to be.”

Aziraphine clasps her hands tight beneath the blankets. “Why are you here? Why did you stay?”

Crowley doesn’t seem to have considered this herself. When she answers, it’s as if she’s thinking out loud. “Wanted to make sure you were okay. After yesterday. I feel—responsible. I _am_ responsible,” she corrects.

“What do you do now? This can’t be what you’ve been sent to do. Aren’t you supposed to—” Aziraphine swallows. “—feed on me? Weaken me? Eventually claim my soul?”

Crowley hisses frustration, turns to replace the book where she found it. She’s all slender, sharp contours from what Aziraphine can tell despite the loose robes, but when she hefts the book above her head, there’s a pull of muscle that suggests the physical strength she used to carry Aziraphine the night before. She’s still facing the books when she says, “You’re so beautiful, I want to ruin you. I do. There’s this thing about being a succubus. A hunger. An emptiness that convinces you the next soul will fill you. It’s a lie. I know that. I don’t have to act on it.”

“Because you said you won’t take.”

Another low hiss. “Yes.”

“What happens if you don’t?” Aziraphine asks carefully. These are answers the tome doesn’t have on demonology. Succubi are usually subtle nocturnal hunters who are picky about their targets. None of her family have ever hunted one, not when there are more destructive, gratuitous demons. Crowley’s honestly would give her even more leverage over her and others like her.

“Unless I feed my soul with the energy of another’s, I will wither until I do not exist. No destruction needed on your part. We are the unluckiest of the damned. Dramatic, yes?” Aziraphine is about to respond when Crowley finally faces her. “My turn to ask the questions. Why did you eventually eat the food if you knew it was from me?”

This is easier than responding to Crowley’s admission. She takes it. “I was scared the first time because I didn’t expect it. I thought you wanted to hurt me. With the first chocolates, I was just so exhausted. And on some unconscious level, I knew there was nothing malicious about them. But they still weren’t normal,” she realizes. “No one can live for a week on tea and a handful of truffles and not feel like they’re starving at the end of it.”

This makes Crowley smile again, and Aziraphine is surprised to realize she’s happy for it.

Her phone rings. Aziraphine startles and feels sick at the spike of adrenaline. Suddenly, the noise is no longer coming from across the room but instead Crowley’s hand. She approaches Aziraphine slowly and hands the phone off. Uriel.

“I have—” she starts, but Crowley is gone.

She answers.

“You haven’t called. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Aziraphine doesn’t want to elaborate but knows Uriel will press.

“And the succubus?”

“Gone,” she says. It’s true for now.

“Discorporated her?”

“Yes,” Aziraphine lies. A small word, but it’s sour on her tongue.

“Worried she’ll come back?” says Uriel, sensing the unease in her voice. “I can bring something more permanent.”

“Don’t,” Aziraphine says too fast.

“Az, what happened?”

The silence stretches. There’s nothing she can tell her sister. She decides to say as much. “I don’t want to talk about this, Uriel. I don’t want to be pulled back into family matters.” Their euphemism. _Family matters_.

“I just need to know you’re safe.”

“I am,” she says, and she hopes it’s not a lie.

* * *

Aziraphine doesn’t open the shop. She can’t make a habit of this, she notes to herself, but at least she managed to put an appropriate notice on the shop’s door this time. When Crowley returns to her, she’s propped up on pillows and curled around the tome. She tenses when Crowley bends to peer at it, and the demon backs off.

“Right. Boundaries. I should—knock or something?” Crowley fidgets and Aziraphine doesn’t know what to make of that. Outside of the context of a temptation, Crowley seems utterly lost. Doesn’t know what to do with her body without the motions of seduction.

She hates this dance they’re doing. This not-quite-trust. They’re no longer enemies—enemies don’t apologize and comfort and heal each other—but they can’t be friends. They’re wary companions, united only in that they’re reluctant to happily follow the path set out for them by their respective sides. Reluctant to hurt one another. It’s a low bar—to ask not to be hurt oneself and agree not to hurt another—but it’s not something even her family provided her. She will discover later that this angers her, the fact that her own mother harmed her and yet a demon tried, in some small way, to undo that harm. It’s beyond her current processing. It does not fit into the carefully crafted worldview of her family.

Aziraphine closes the tome and sits up. “What made you change your mind about what you were sent here to do? Is that something I can ask?”

Crowley settles onto a nearby cushion. “I’d never met an angel.”

“I’m not an angel,” says Aziraphine. “You know that.”

“You’re, what, one percent angel?” says Crowley, and briefly, she’s back in her element, all flirtation and quirked eyebrows. When she sobers, she says, “You didn’t want to hurt me. I could see that. You were soft and beautiful, and all you wanted was your quiet and your books. You _were_ angelic. At least to me. It seemed a shame, when people like you are so rare, to do—what I’d been told to do. I was more curious than hungry. And the job— Well, I don’t stand to gain or lose anything from it.”

“Won’t there be consequences? When they find out?”

Crowley shrugs and makes a noise in the back of her throat, picks at a loose thread on her cushion. “I know what I’m doing,” she says, low and final.

“Thank you,” tries Aziraphine. “For telling me what you have.”

Crowley nods but won’t meet her gaze.

_Give and take_ , she thinks. If she wants Crowley to open up, perhaps she needs to share something of her own.

She smooths her hand over the old leather cover of the tome. “This is everything my family knows about demonology,” she offers. She doesn’t know where she’s going, just keeps talking. She has Crowley’s attention now, but she watches her warily. “All of my siblings have one. When we’re training, we memorize it from cover to cover. Every tactic, every sigil, every ritual and weakness.” She turns to the diagram of the circle she used, places it right-side-up in front of Crowley. “This one is standard. It didn’t affect you.”

Crowley recoils first as if the mere sight of it might hurt her, then she leans in. Her hand hovers over the page. She glances to Aziraphine, her frown deepening. “Why would you show me this?”

Aziraphine turns over several hundred pages, back to the beginning of the book, back to the index of angels. “All of us are named after them,” she says, nodding to a page dominated by an illustration of a multi-winged, many-eyed seraphim who wields a sword alight with holy radiance. “I’m named for Aziraphale.”

Crowley looks from the illustration to Aziraphine and back again. “Too bad you don’t get all the wings,” she says, but the joke is flat.

Aziraphine closes her eyes for a moment, worries the ring on her little finger. “Some of us do. If we’re disciplined to draw deeply enough upon our ethereal nature. The demons who have witnessed the transformation don’t survive. So your side wouldn’t know.”

Crowley doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe. “Can you?”

“Once. When I was pure, I accessed that light for a moment, but I still couldn’t manifest wings.”

Gingerly, Crowley finally lays a hand on the book and traces a column of names. “If you ever trusted me, would you show me?” she whispers.

Emotion surges through her before she can check it. “You know I can’t,” she snaps. “After what’s happened, I’m certainly not worthy of wings.” Angry tears suddenly blur her vision, and Crowley is a black and red smudge moving towards her.

“Aziraphine, purity isn’t—”

“You’re not Nephilim. You don’t know our teachings. You don’t know how it works!”

The pressure of Crowley’s hands on her shoulders might have been comforting before, but now the touch seems to burn her through her clothes. She swipes them away.

“Leave me alone!”

“But Aziraphine, I meant—”

“Leave me alone!”

The heat of her withdraws. The floor creaks. When Aziraphine can see again, the room is empty, and she’s desperate for the familiarity and relief of the wooden box. She rummages through the kitchen drawers, finds knives. Carves the ancient words of cleansing blessings into her arms. When it’s done, she feels like she can breathe again.

* * *

The sun has just set when a soft knock sounds at the door.

“It’s me,” Crowley’s voice carries muffled through the barrier.

She’s glad she doesn’t have to raise her voice for Crowley to hear. She doesn’t know if she could. Her throat feels raw and tight. “I know,” she whispers. No one else knocks at her door.

“Have you . . . eaten anything today?”

“I don’t want your chocolate. I’m sick of chocolate.” She feels petulant. She feels exposed. She feels scraped hollow.

“I could cook something?” Again, the uptick.

“Demons can’t cook.”

Crowley doesn’t argue the point. “I could go out for something. Whatever your favorite is.”

“I can see,” Aziraphine repeats, “everything you want.” _Let her put her prodding to good use_ , she thinks.

There’s nothing else from the other side of the door. When Crowley knocks ten minutes later, it’s with a bag of takeout sushi in hand. Even in the dark, she notices the catch in Crowley’s stride when she glimpses the cuts.

“Lights on, yes?” Crowley prompts, and with a snap of her fingers, they’re no longer in the gloom. Crowley sets the food on the counter and is careful not to stare at Aziraphine’s blood-stained arms. In her parents’ home, they never had to hide the visible markers of their atonement, but she realizes no one outside her family has seen such devotion.

Crowley scrubs a hand down her face, composes herself. Aziraphine suddenly registers her change of clothes—a shockingly modern black blazer and fitted jeans. A pair of sunglasses to shield her serpentine eyes.

“You’re mostly human,” Crowley begins carefully. Considers. Changes approach. “You left them, Aziraphine. You left for a reason. You were unhappy there. With their rules. Why hold yourself to those standards?”

She feels small. She’s never asked herself that question for a reason.

“You have your shop. You have neighbors. This whole community of people. Here’s a new way of being for you.”

“I feel foolish for leaving.”

“Leaving took strength.”

“And I’ve used all I have.” She doesn’t want to cry anymore. “Thank you for the food,” she says, tucking into the bag and withdrawing containers and chopsticks. She won’t look at Crowley. “Share with me? If you can eat.”

They sit on the floor, a spread of sushi between them. Crowley takes only one piece and leaves the rest for Aziraphine. It’s the first real food she’s had all week, and she can’t help but hum contentedly through the first bites. “Thank you,” she says again and smiles at Crowley. They finish the meal in silence, and Crowley clears the containers after.

“I want to help you. If you want it,” Crowley says, and Aziraphine knows what she means. A brush of Crowley’s hands down her arms, and the blessings are gone. Aziraphine is still staring at her healed flesh when Crowley says, “I should go.”

“Why?”

“I’ve made my decision not to hurt you. There’s nothing else for me to do here.”

“Oh.” What could she argue against that? Their problem is resolved. What would a demon and a Nephilim do together?

“So—” Crowley stands, nods. She’s unbalanced again, fidgety. Aziraphine wishes she could see her eyes.

“Stay,” Aziraphine decides.

Crowley raises an eyebrow.

“Stay,” Aziraphine says more firmly. She goes to her, reaches up for the glasses. “Can I?”

Crowley doesn’t answer but doesn’t back away. Aziraphine removes them slowly and finds—

“Your eyes are different.” She states the obvious because she’s surprised. The vivid gold of Crowley’s irises has expanded to fill the whole of her eyes, and there’s a tension around them that wasn’t present before. Crowley isn’t breathing again, seems to be waiting on Aziraphine. When the realization settles on her, she forces herself not to step back, tries to hold Crowley’s intensified gaze.

“How often do you usually feed?”

A muscle in Crowley’s jaw tenses. She tries for casual and fails. “Usually? Nightly. I’ve pushed it to three nights before.”

“It’s been a week,” Aziraphine says unnecessarily.

“Yes.”

“You’ve been here a week.”

Crowley reaches for her glasses, and Aziraphine returns them to her, but she doesn’t put them on.

“Since you’ve been with me, have you not fed from anyone?”

“No.”

“Would it hurt me terribly much?”

Aziraphine thinks Crowley isn’t going to answer her when she says, “There are several ways. With varying levels of fulfilment for the succubus and varying levels of harm for the human. Killing feels best. It’s not a method I’m fond of.”

“And the others?” Aziraphine asks too fast.

“I told you I wouldn’t.”

“I’m offering.”

Crowley hisses, finally breaks eye contact. “You’re Nephilim, so you have reserves of energy that humans don’t. Energy that I can’t access because it would destroy me. It might be frightening and . . . difficult in the moment, but if you drew on your ethereal energy, I could never harm you. You’d barely feel fatigued.”

“And you’d be satisfied?”

“As content as if I’d fully drained someone.”

Aziraphine twists her ring on her finger, allows herself to step out of Crowley’s space.

“What if this is just a trick to make my job easier? Can you tell if I’m lying to you?” Crowley asks with a frown.

“Are you?” asks Aziraphine. “Would you like a ward of truth-telling?” Then it clicks. “The circle didn’t work because I’d used the sigil for _intention_. The circle activated because it detected demonic presence, but you could exist within it because you had no _intention_ to harm.”

“You’re much too excited by the prospect of trusting a demon.”

“I’m hopeful that I could trust _you_.”

Crowley makes a noise in her throat, and Aziraphine takes her hands and leads her to the bed. They sit facing each other, and the long, dark lines of Crowley’s limbs are a sharp contrast to Aziraphine’s tartan blankets and hand-stitched quilts. Despite Crowley’s rigid posture, Aziraphine has the sense that the demon is stretching free from a long time spent stiff and cramped, all languid and indulgent, a long, breathy sigh. The feeling reaches for Aziraphine, circles her, curls around her, sensuous and heavy. Aziraphine finds herself back to worrying her ring, distracted by the growing warmth and wet between her thighs. Crowley hasn’t even made a move towards her, and she has to push back against the shame attempting to creep in.

“Are you doing something to me right now?” she asks, and it comes out too breathily, too needy. She’s struck by the strong urge to press her body against Crowley’s, feel the demon’s breath against her neck.

“Not consciously,” Crowley answers. “My energy affects close humans when I’m intending to feed.” She licks her lips. “Prepares them for me.”

“Oh.” Aziraphine thinks again that she might drown in this.

“Do you feel you’re still able to say ‘no’ if you need to? If I accidentally push you too far?”

“Yes,” Aziraphine says, and bites down hard against the sound that threatens to follow.

Crowley’s unnaturally still—watching her, making some judgment. “You’re strong against it. Are you resisting? If you do, it’ll hurt when I try to draw from you.”

“Oh,” Aziraphine manages.

“That bit of trivia not in your tome either?”

She forces her mind to focus on the question. The air around them is too thick. She presses her thighs together. “No, actually, no it’s not.”

“I want you to undress me,” says Crowley suddenly, and Aziraphine can see the weariness in her, the fatigue she’d been fighting to hide.

Aziraphine doesn’t remember closing the space between them, but suddenly, her hands are on Crowley’s lapels, and she’s tugging the blazer free of her arms. Then they’re fumbling over the buttons of Crowley’s wine-red shirt, half of them undone already. She feels dizzy. No, drunk would be more accurate. Time skips forward in frames. She feels feverish, shaky, urgent, all focus bent on Crowley’s request.

“Angel.” Hot hands cup her face, steady her. Golden eyes. Such beautiful golden eyes. Her head swims with the image of them. “You can’t resist me, but you also have to focus, yeah?” Crowley’s voice reaches her as if through water.

“I want you,” she moans, and the sound feels obscene in her mouth. She feels as if something else is talking for her.

“That’s enough,” says Crowley, and the thing draws back. The air clears. The room opens up. The strained look returns.

Aziraphine finds that she’s breathing harder than she should be. “Did you . . .?”

“We hadn’t even started. That’s just the effects of my aura.”

Aziraphine groans. “I don’t see how we’re going to get past this point without me resisting it. There’s not an in-between for me.” She hates having such a technical conversation while she’s mildly aroused and Crowley is half-undressed. It feels like she’s been sent out into the field and forgotten all her training. It feels silly to be here like this, in her own space, frustrated because she can’t be properly offer herself to a demon.

“We don’t have to do this now. Or ever,” says Crowley.

“But aren’t you weak?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Aziraphine thinks. “I want to try. Let me get used to your aura so I can figure it out.”

“You’re saying you want to practice—this?” Crowley clarifies.

She nods.

“Then I’ll ask you something like before and you can—figure it out?”

She nods again.

This time is not a gradual unwinding. One moment, the room is normal, and the next, Aziraphine can see only Crowley’s body, can only feel her own lust.

“Kiss me,” says Crowley, and time skips again.

In the next moment she manages to grab hold of, her lips are already against Crowley’s. In the next, her back is pressed into the mattress, and Crowley is above her. She moans into her mouth and deepens the kiss, heedless of Crowley’s fangs—

It’s over again. The room is bright and clear. She’s still on her back and breathing hard. Crowley is topless but composed on the edge of the bed, watching her. Aziraphine’s mouth tastes metallic, and when she swipes a hand over her mouth, it comes away smeared red.

“I lose time when I’m in there,” she pants. “If I can stop losing time, I can focus.” She sits up. “I want to try again.”

“Once more,” Crowley concedes. “Then rest.”

Before Crowley’s aura washes over her again, she closes her eyes and falls into herself. Finds a glimmer of white-blue light. When she surfaces, the world is watery and dense. Crowley is there within reach of her, and she _desires her_ , but the rest of the room still exists, though blurry around the edges.

“Kiss me,” Crowley says again, and there’s no rush to comply. She moves because she wants to, and this time, she can enjoy Crowley. Can brush a hand over her chest and down her ribs. Can choose to raise her hand and tangle her fingers in her hair as their lips meet.

“Your eyes are glowing,” Crowley says against her lips. “Are you yourself?”

“Yes,” she says, and joins them in a kiss again.

Crowley undresses her, and in the heady space of the aura, she doesn’t have the presence of mind to be self-conscious. The choice to let Crowley pull her deeper into this experience seems like an obvious one. She’s careful with her, dusting her collarbone with kisses before moving back to meet her eyes. To check that her focus remains. Crowley seems to thrill at pinning her to the bed and climbing atop her, grinding the heat of her body into Aziraphine’s. She is smoke and shadow, her corporeal form phasing in and out in sections. Her side or shoulder is a stretch of shadow for the span of a blink, and then she’s flesh again. A silhouette of wings builds above them like a darkening storm cloud.

Crowley draws a silk ribbon from her hair that wasn’t there before. It’s black as her claws, and she holds it briefly in her teeth as she dips a hand between Aziraphine’s thighs, traces light fingertips over her clit. Crowley is careful with her claws, but Aziraphine can feel the barest press of their edges against her sensitive flesh, and it sends a thrill of sensation through her. She can’t help the moan that escapes her, and Crowley grins around the ribbon, white fangs sharp against the fabric. She curls her fingers and prods her knuckles into the wetness between Aziraphine’s thighs, eliciting a whimper from her mouth. Crowley hums approvingly, takes the ribbon from her mouth, and straddles Aziraphine’s waist. It’s only now that Aziraphine can tell just how wet Crowley is. She’s so apparently unbothered otherwise, so cool, so composed, and Aziraphine’s stomach twists at the knowledge that her body could entice a succubus. Her hips grind up into Crowley, and the demon’s eyes flutter shut for a moment. Only a moment. Then her hands are braced on either side of Aziraphine’s head, and she’s searching her eyes again.

“I think you’re ready,” she says against Aziraphine’s neck. “I’d like to bind you for this, if you don’t mind.”

Aziraphine reaches up while she can, traces the line of Crowley’s lips with her thumb and marvels at its softness. Crowley’s mouth parts slightly at the touch, and Aziraphine runs the pad of her finger over the point of a fang. Crowley’s tongue darts out, tastes her, then draws Aziraphine’s finger into her mouth and sucks. It’s a long, forked tongue, Aziraphine notes, a true devil’s tongue. She is prey in the mouth of a predator, and she has invited it. Crowley shoots her another lascivious grin before there’s a sharp stab of pain at her fingertip. Crowley hums, shuts her eyes, sucks harder.

“You’ve lovely blood. Just as I expected,” she pronounces.

The ribbon is cool and soft against Aziraphine’s skin when Crowley loops it around her wrists and ties her to the headboard.

“You’ve been so good for me. I’ll need you to stay focused,” Crowley says, and she traces the point of a claw from Aziraphine’s cheek to the soft hollow of her neck. “This is the important part.”

Crowley’s wings are darkening and solidifying above them. Her claws draw papercut-thin trails of blood with the barest graze, and the sheets and pillows near Aziraphine’s head are torn where Crowley has rested her weight. Her cheekbones seem inhumanly sharper, and when she speaks it’s with lengthened fangs.

“I can make this fast. So you don’t have to concentrate long.” She swallows. “Remember what I told you.”

Aziraphine’s heart flutters. She nods.

And then Crowley’s moving down Aziraphine’s body, pushing her legs open, and settling between her thighs. The heat of Crowley’s mouth and press of her serpentine tongue against Aziraphine’s clit make her immediately cry out. Crowley’s hands grip her thighs, holding her steady even as her claws dig into Aziraphine’s flesh. The jolt of pleasure immediately drains her. She moans. Time slips forward.

“Focus, Aziraphine,” she hears Crowley growl warningly. “Or I will stop.”

Aziraphine fights to ground herself in the bodily sensation of Crowley’s claws against her thighs, anything that isn’t pleasure. She retreats into herself as years of training have taught her and finds the wave of blue-white light that flows through her body. Grasps hold of it.

When she returns to her body, it’s to the shock of Crowley’s sharp mouth nipping her clit, and it’s enough to push her over the edge. She screams something incoherent. Her hands pull helplessly at her restraints. This orgasm feels wrong, twisted, empty. There are no waves to rock her. The drain is instant and greedy and vicious.

“Aziraphine.” Crowley’s voice. The demon is above her but out of focus, blurry with tears. “ _Aziraphine_ ,” she repeats, insistent.

She falls away from reality, finds the light again, holds to it with all her strength—and is renewed.

The room is brighter than normal when she opens her eyes. She sits up—Crowley must have untied her—and finds herself staring at an awestruck demon on the other end of the bed. Aziraphine doesn’t understand. She must look a right mess. As Aziraphine discovers the edges of her body again, she takes in the shredded sheets and exposed downy stuffing spilling from the pillows. Her curls are sweat damp against her forehead. She’s examining the smears of blood on her body, strangely unmoved by them, when she tuts, “I’m afraid we’ve made a bit of a mess with this.”

“Aziraphine,” says Crowley again, and Aziraphine registers the reflection of blue light in the demon’s gold eyes.

A shimmer of white-blue light dusts her shoulders, and finally, Aziraphine looks up and around her. A stretch of radiant, ethereal wings span the room—and they’re hers. They’re attached to _her._ She flutters them lightly, marvels at the way they catch and push the air. They feel as natural as her arms, as if she’s always had them and known how to move with them. When she looks back at Crowley, the demon’s curls stir on the gentle breeze created by Aziraphine’s wings, and Aziraphine notices that Crowley’s own wings have become a solid presence at her back.

“They’re beautiful,” says Crowley. “You’re beautiful.” She closes the space between them and cups Aziraphine’s face in her hands. “Thank you.” She kisses her cheeks and forehead. “Thank you.”

Aziraphine buries her face in the crook of Crowley’s neck, and the demon puts her arms around her, careful not to brush her wings.

“You bit my clitoris,” she says numbly.

Crowley makes a series of flustered non-verbal noises. “Did—did you not— I mean, I didn’t do it very hard. More of a nibble than a bite. If you don’t like it, I won’t do it again.” Pause. “Is that really what you’re thinking right now?”

Aziraphine sighs, breathes in the smoky scent of Crowley’s skin. Nothing about this moment seems real. “I don’t understand. Why now? When I’ve practiced for years and was never worthy enough. I shouldn’t be able to manifest wings. I’m not good enough. I’m not—”

“Don’t, Aziraphine,” Crowley says, knowing where her ramble is going. She squeezes her close. “You’re perfect and—we’ll figure out how your wings work. Together, if you want.”

“But if someone like me is worthy of wings, what else have our teachings gotten wrong?”

Crowley smooths a hand over Aziraphine’s hair, but Aziraphine doesn’t miss the way she tenses at the question. “If you’re going to ask your questions, be prepared for the repercussions of them.” There’s something beneath the surface of the statement that Aziraphine is too tired to prod right now.

“It must be so late,” she murmurs. “I should go to bed. I should open the shop tomorrow. Remember to call Uriel. Get new pillows.”

Crowley chuckles, and Aziraphine likes the way it rumbles through her chest. It’s such an honest noise of amusement. “Well, maybe I was slightly wrong. It seems this can make you a _little_ tired.” She snaps her fingers and the bedclothes and pillows are cleaned and repaired; the minor cuts and blood are cleaned away.

Aziraphine pulls back. “Won’t you stay?”

Crowley blinks at her.

“If it’s not boring for you, I think I’d like the company.”

Crowley takes her hand with a level of tenderness and trepidation that would suggest they’ve never so much as kissed. “Of course, angel.”

Aziraphine brushes her teeth and showers while Crowley waits at the edge of the bed and pretends she hasn’t flipped through all the books on the bedside table. They turn off the lights and vanish their wings and settle under the covers together, Aziraphine nestled into the bend of Crowley’s body. The smoke-heat of Crowley’s scent envelops her, and as sleep descends, she realizes how much comfort she finds in something that should signal danger.


	3. To Live Eternal Seasons Under Her Gaze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphine and Crowley resolve to spend one normal day together before things fall apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song "Gravedigger" by MXMS has major succubus Crowley energy. Especially after what we learn in this chapter.
> 
> Content warning for brief spanking in the context of kinky smut near the end of the chapter.
> 
> As before, if you feel something needs to be warned for, please let me know! Thank you all for reading. This fic has turned out to be more honest and meaningful to me than I expected, so all the comments and kudos you've left have just been amazing <3

Aziraphine wakes to the cold light of early dawn and a pit of dread in her stomach. Crowley is still nestled at her back, and for all appearances, seems to be genuinely asleep. Her red curls are a tantalizing spill across the sheets, her full lips parted on a quiet breath. Even in sleep, she draws Aziraphine in, a perfect temptation at all times.

Aziraphine eases herself out of bed so as not to wake Crowley and pads across the cold floor. She feels so terribly absurd. Crowley has told her so little of anything that matters, and still, Aziraphine was swept completely away by her kindness. It would not be unreasonable for her kindness to be part of some long-range plan that Aziraphine is unable to see. She’s a creature of seduction. She can discern a need and offer to fill it.

She’s risked so much for a small show of kindness. She feels pathetic for it but hungrier still. This is all much too fast, and she’s had no time to process what it means.

When she turns back to the bed, Crowley is sitting up, golden eyes intense on her. Aziraphine startles and immediately starts blabbering. “So sorry to wake you, dear. The floors are quite creaky, and I’m so used to being alone and not having anyone to disturb.”

“You want me to reassure you, but I can’t,” says Crowley. “Not in any meaningful way.” She slips from the bed, still fully nude and unconcerned by it. “I could seduce you with kindness alone, you’re right. I’ve never tried to seduce anyone as hungry for softness as you.” She envelops Aziraphine in her smoke-scented embrace and sighs into her hair. The heat of her body banishes the morning chill. “But my kindness is genuine. If that’s something you’re able to believe. Tell me, what would you do if you had only eleven days left with me?”

Aziraphine wishes she could see her face. “That’s oddly specific.”

Her hands slip down Aziraphine’s torso and under the hem of her shirt to press heat into her back. “Tell me,” she whispers, grazing the skin of Aziraphine’s neck with her fangs.

“I’d want to share my favorite books with you, go to a play. Maybe even . . .”

“Yes?”

“A date? As if we’re normal human people just going to a restaurant.”

“Hm.”

“Maybe just have . . . normal sex?”

“You keep using the word _normal_. I feel stigmatized.” She draws back, and there’s a teasing smile playing across her lips.

Aziraphine feels she can’t quite join in on her mood. “What happens in eleven days?”

Crowley runs a fang over her lower lip. “They’ll find out I’m a traitor, and I’m sure they’ll invent some ingeniously painful execution just for me. Beelzebub likes those personal touches.”

“You don’t sound concerned,” Aziraphine says, and it’s a fight to keep her voice level.

“Eh.” Crowley rolls her eyes. “Working myself into a panic over something I can’t help is not exactly sexy is it? It’s fine. I’ve lived long enough.”

Aziraphine struggles to process Crowley’s nonchalance with the sudden news that they have so little time, that _something_ is happening in a mere eleven days that will tip the demons off to Crowley’s defection. She doesn’t know what to say first. Why would Crowley protect Hell’s plan if she’s given them up? Could she offer to protect Crowley? _Could_ she even protect Crowley from a hoard of demons? How many would be hurt as a result of Hell’s plan?

“I-I have to get ready for work,” she says with all the panic that she feels.

Crowley blinks at her and stammers. “Yeah, er, if that’s—yeah.”

Aziraphine doesn’t mean to, but she slams the bathroom door behind her.

* * *

“I have the sense that Halloween’s going to be really big this year,” Ana is saying, but Aziraphine barely hears her. It’s when she asks, “Do you have any plans?” that Aziraphine stops poking at the shelves below the register and stands up.

“What did you say, dear?”

“Do you have any plans? For Halloween?”

“When is that now?”

Ana taps into the calendar on her phone. “It lands on a Saturday this year. Lucky that we get a weekend Halloween this time around.”

“Ah.”

Ana’s brow furrows. “Sorry to bring this up again, but you still seem a bit—well— _unwell_.”

“Yes, um, it’s mostly fine. Everything should resolve soon. But thank you for your concern, my dear.”

“Like I said before—” She gestures across the street. “I’m just there.”

When Ana leaves, Aziraphine turns to find Crowley emerging from the children’s section perusing a board book on butterfly life cycles. The little book seems wrong in her sharp hands. She’s dressed again in a black blazer and tight leather trousers, but today she’s decided on a severe V-neck that flaunts the swell of her breasts.

“You know, I invented the slutty version of every Halloween costume,” Crowley says without a glance up from her book.

“What?” It’s not what she’d expected her to say.

“If you search your heart, you’ll find what I say to be true.” Crowley winks, turning to disappear into the shelves again.

Everyone who comes into the shop asks about Crowley.

“Is she famous or something?” her sixth customer whispers, setting down her books on the counter. Aziraphine sighs, glances back at Crowley, and does a double take. The demon is slouched sideways in Aziraphine’s favorite armchair and tapping away on a smartphone. It shouldn’t be so surprising now. Crowley has manifested all manner of things. Modern electronics wouldn’t necessarily be beyond her.

“No,” huffs Aziraphine.

“She looks famous,” insists the customer.

Aziraphine rings up her purchases and gives the price, but the customer is too busy staring at Crowley to notice. Aziraphine repeats the price but doesn’t know how to ask a third time in a way that doesn’t make her feel horribly impolite. Once she manages to get the woman out of the shop, she goes to Crowley. The demon quirks an eyebrow to acknowledge her presence but doesn’t look up from what appears to be her Instagram feed.

“Jealous, angel?” she says.

“No. Just mildly inconvenienced.”

Crowley allows a mischievous smile to spread across her face. “Trust me, this is, in fact, mild. I don’t even have to lift a finger around you humans and you’re falling over yourselves.”

“I suppose you’re very proud of that.”

“Oh, the things I’ve done to you would earn me bragging rights in Hell.” She licks her lips suggestively, and Aziraphine can’t help her blush. The comment doesn’t settle right though. She wants to say something. Turns her pinky ring once, twice. Crowley tries to fall back into whatever she was wasting time on on her phone, but her brow wrinkles into a frown when she realizes why Aziraphine is hovering. She pockets it. “I’m sorry, angel, I’m such a fucking disaster.” She sits up properly and reaches for Aziraphine’s hand like she’s about to propose. “Forgive me. I really do value what you did for me. Your trust.” If possible, this makes Aziraphine blush more. “Your pleasure tastes delicious,” she murmurs against Aziraphine’s knuckles.

It’s too much, and Aziraphine pulls her hand back. “Don’t make me want you while I’m working,” she admonishes, but there’s no sting behind it.

“Perhaps you could do with some ‘normal’ sex after work, then?” the demon suggests easily, and Aziraphine can nearly hear the quotes around the word.

* * *

She knows they’re ignoring it. Well—Aziraphine is, anyway. She’s become comfortable in avoidance. It’s why she hasn’t returned to her family estate since she left. It’s why, until very recently, she left her hunter’s tome buried at the bottom of her chest. It’s how she manages to turn away from the odd shadow she senses, go about her day as a normal human, and hope nothing too terribly bad happens.

It’s obvious that Crowley is waiting on Aziraphine’s lead to resume their conversation from that morning.

She wants to—she does—but all her nervousness expresses itself in bustling around the shop as if it’s any other day and nothing so pressing as a sinister infernal plot looms in the near future.

Aziraphine is saying goodbye to another customer just after lunch when Crowley’s arms snake around her middle. The scent of smoke rolls over her. The demon waits for the bell to quiet before she speaks.

“One normal day,” she says.

Aziraphine turns in Crowley’s arms, bringing them face to face, and neither would have to move much for them to kiss.

“Let’s just give ourselves today, and we’ll talk about everything tomorrow. One day to live like everything’s fine. Would you calm down then? If I give you permission to not worry about responding to me?”

 _But you’re going to die_ , she thinks. _You’re going to die because of me_.

“No, not that face again,” tuts Crowley. “Let’s do that thing you wanted. ‘Normal human people going to a restaurant’ you said. Let’s do it tonight. Eh? What d’you say?”

Aziraphine settles her hands on Crowley’s hips and her ridiculous leather trousers. “I think I’d like that.”

* * *

When closing time nears, Aziraphine notices an old black car parked on the curb in front of the bookshop. _Old_ might not quite be the right word. Although Aziraphine knows nothing about cars, she knows it’s so old and well taken care of as to be decidedly vintage.

It really shouldn’t surprise her when, after locking up, Crowley saunters confidently to the car’s passenger side and opens the door for Aziraphine.

A moment of recalibration happens. Yes, that is, in fact, the passenger side. Aziraphine can see the steering wheel on the right. And for some reason, the fact that demons not only have smart phones but also own and drive cars is of an equal level of bafflement as remembering that steering wheels can exist just fine on the right side of a car.

Crowley watches Aziraphine process all this with a growing smirk. “1933 Bentley,” she provides proudly.

“Why do you have a vintage Bentley? Where do you keep it?”

Crowley ignores the second question. “Sometimes you’re in the mood for a good old-fashioned human-style seduction. Take them out for dinner first, and all. I don’t think my colleagues appreciate the more subtle seductions.”

A couple people on the sidewalk stare with undisguised envy as they walk by, unabashedly staring over their shoulders as they pass. Crowley seems to practically drink in the waves of lust rolling off of them.

Aziraphine only says, “Your plates are wrong. We don’t have plates like that in the US.”

“Eh,” Crowley shrugs. “No one’ll notice. Come on, angel.”

She doesn’t ask where they’re going. Aziraphine folds her hands politely in her lap as Crowley slides into the driver’s seat, but her composure doesn’t last once they’re on the road.

“You trusted me with your bodily wellbeing, but you don’t trust me to drive us to dinner?” Crowley asks when Aziraphine suggests for the fourth time that they slow down.

A high-pitched strained noise escapes Aziraphine, and she covers her eyes for the rest of the drive.

They arrive in front of a French restaurant on the other side of town in record time. Aziraphine doesn’t realize she’s shaking until Crowley comes to open her door and takes her hand. “Sorry, angel,” she says, but Aziraphine doesn’t think she means it this time. When she steps out of the car, however, the cool breeze grounds her, and she thinks how unreal it is to be outside in public hand-in-hand with Crowley. She’d thought the normalcy of it would resist them somehow, but they have their normal, and it’s magical. It’s early evening and pedestrians are beginning to crowd the sidewalks, other people on their way to restaurants or shows. Many of them stare at Aziraphine and Crowley, thinking them an odd couple though oblivious to just _how_ odd. Aziraphine doesn’t notice them. For her, there’s only the slow slide of Crowley’s smile, the teasing swing of her hips, the slither of sibilants on her tongue. Their table is in a private corner of the restaurant, and when the food finally arrives, Aziraphine has only recently stopped shaking from the adrenaline of the drive. The crepes, however, fully distract her from any lingering anxieties regarding having to get back in the car for the drive home. Aziraphine is halfway through her food when she begins to feel the intensity of Crowley’s gaze on her. She swallows and dabs at her lips with the cloth napkin.

“My dear?”

“I love that you call me that,” Crowley murmurs. The intensity remains.

Aziraphine sits back in her chair.

“I know you call everyone that, but— No one’s ever thought to use an endearment with me. Not that I court endearment.”

“But you’re lovely,” Aziraphine blurts.

“Ehh, pretty sure that’s not the first impression I made on you. And I don’t often have the opportunity for second and third impressions.” She draws her phone from her pocket, taps the screen a couple times, and pushes her phone across the table to Aziraphine. Aziraphine doesn’t know what to make of what she’s seeing at first, but the screen of tiles eventually resolves into a series of pictures, all of the same red-haired demon. She picks up the phone.

“You’re—” Aziraphine squints at the screen. “xXxHellfireHotiexXx?”

“Don’t be a troll. It’s funny.”

Aziraphine scrolls through. A photo of Crowley deepthroating a rather strangely shaped dildo at what appears to be a party. Another of Crowley’s naked body covered in money, her fanged mouth half open and dripping blood. One of her smiling gleeful innocence in the background as she holds up what appears to be a human heart to the camera.

Before the terror of it can fully register, Crowley peers over at the phone and comments, “Oh, he was a wanker. Don’t feel bad for him.” 

“Does this violate Instagram’s terms of service?” Aziraphine asks numbly.

“Instagram has terms of service?” Crowley shrugs. “I don’t think they apply to me.”

Aziraphine scrolls farther. Each post has tens of thousands of likes. “You have so many followers. You must not be making too many bad impressions.”

“People think they’re edgy for enjoying the shock value.” She’s suddenly on her feet and pulling her chair around the table to sit next to Aziraphine. “Here, let’s you and me take one.”

“What?” Aziraphine says, an edge of panic in her tone.

“Nothing _intense_ , just like, a fun picture. Show my followers that I’m not covered in blood all the time.” Crowley throws and arm around the back of Aziraphine’s chair and leans into her space, frowning at the camera until she finds and angle that she likes. “Don’t look terrified. Smile,” says Crowley.

Aziraphine does as she’s told but she looks like she’s sitting for a professional photo as a librarian next to Crowley with her practiced flirty wink.

“Um . . .” starts Aziraphine as Crowley begins tapping at the phone screen again.

 _date nite!! ;)_ _look at this cute angel i found, y’all. she’s so precious and not at all as naughty as me lol_ , she types under their selfie, and it’s posted before Aziraphine can make any protests about herself looking like a stuffy librarian.

“Your eyes are visible in all of them,” she says instead.

“People just think everything is contacts and good makeup and body mods these days. Don’t have to hide so much online. Look, we’re already getting likes. People love you!” she says, handing the phone back to Aziraphine as proof.

Seeing Crowley’s assembled posts baffles her, as if she’s looking at another person. Someone trying very hard to seem tough and cool and careless. She scrolls back to the picture of them together, Crowley’s forked tongue out, one golden eye closed in a suggestive wink. Aziraphine is a stark contrast next to her.

“Let’s take a normal one,” she suggests.

Crowley rolls her eyes dramatically. “You’re obsessed with normal,” she grumbles but complies.

Crowley lets Aziraphine hold the phone for the second photo, and Aziraphine taps the shutter button just as Crowley turns away, face nuzzled softly into Aziraphine’s curls, all the sharpness of her obscured. Crowley stares at the photo when Aziraphine hands the phone back to her.

“Is this how you see me?” she says, something about her self-image shifting before Aziraphine’s eyes. They keep the photo for themselves, don’t post it.

As Aziraphine follows Crowley out to the car, all she can do is stare at her back and think, _She’s going to die. She’s going to die in ten days, but I could live eternal seasons under her gaze._

* * *

When they return to Aziraphine’s apartment, they don’t turn on the lights. They don’t have normal sex or any sex at all.

“Thank you for the meal,” Aziraphine says, her voice soft in the gloom.

“Don’t mention it, angel,” says Crowley. “It’s nothing. Infinite resources and all.”

She’s seemed shy about her potential for softness since their conversation, as if it has taken all her attention and turned her quiet, so much so that she only drove twenty miles over the speed limit on their way back.

“May I?” asks Crowley when they settle onto the bed together. Aziraphine nods and Crowley applies the heat of her hands to Aziraphine’s shoulders, massaging the tension from them. “How did it feel?” she asks. “Your wings.”

“They feel like they’ve always been part of me, just waiting to be found. I felt bright.”

“You _were_ bright. Damn near burned my eyes,” Crowley chuckles.

She smiles over her shoulder. “I would have warned you if I knew it’d happen.”

“Do you think you could find them again whenever you like?”

Aziraphine closes her eyes, and she can sense the shape and weight of their light like phantom limbs. She tries to grasp at it, but it’s as if her hand passes through. “I can _see_ them, but I don’t think I can make it happen just because I want it to.”

“Maybe they manifested because your body perceived a threat?”

“It didn’t feel like that,” says Aziraphine. “Something else triggered it.”

Crowley scrapes her nails ticklishly slow down Aziraphine’s back. “Bet it was the amazing orgasm I gave you.”

“It was not!” Aziraphine nearly shrieks, turning to slap playfully at Crowley’s hands.

When they calm, Crowley places a kiss on Aziraphine’s shoulder, and it occurs to Aziraphine that Crowley has never kissed her mouth, not outside of the context of sex. It seems strange to her, and she’s trying to parse what it means when she says, “There’s so much I want to learn about you, but suddenly there’s no time.”

“What do you want to know?” Crowley asks, as if it’s that easy.

“Everything.”

“Can’t cover thousands of years in one night, but I can give you the highlights.”

Aziraphine leans back into Crowley, and Crowley settles her arms around Aziraphine’s middle.

“Starting at the very beginning is out because I don’t remember who I was before the fall. All I have is this certainty that being made a succubus was a special punishment. I wasn’t like the others who fell. I didn’t participate in the rebellion, but I was guilty by association.”

“A special punishment for what?” asks Aziraphine, still stuck on her earlier statement.

“Oh.” She combs a hand through Aziraphine’s hair. “I guess I asked the wrong kinds of questions. Wanted to know why we angels could manifest physical bodies if seeking and indulging in pleasure betrayed our devotion to the Almighty. Now all the sensations of the world are open to me, but I’ll die if I don’t indulge the destructive pleasure of feeding.”

“That seems cruel.”

She feels Crowley shrug. “I’ve had enough time to make peace with it.”

 _But have you?_ Aziraphine almost asks. She understands now why Crowley was so gentle with her and angry for her.

She finds, when Crowley takes her through history, that the demon marks the passage of time by local fashions. Some big historical events she knows little about personally but can recount the itch of whatever fabric was common wherever she’d been sent on a mission. Eventually, she’s standing up and turning the whole affair into a fashion show, snapping her fingers through hundreds of years of representative outfits. Aziraphine lets her, laughing at her poses and vocal affectations.

This is easier than talking about celestial and infernal forces. Easier for Crowley, she supposes, than recounting the bloody details of an unfathomably long life enacting and witnessing cruelty. The clothes were a source of joy, a distraction, a way for her to assume a new identity and pretend for a little while that she was _normal_. Aziraphine realizes this and becomes quieter and pensive. Crowley doesn’t fail to notice, and soon she’s rustling over to her in layers of skirts and lace.

“You were lonely,” Aziraphine says.

“Yes.”

“Heaven hurt you, and then Hell—”

“I want to sleep, Aziraphine. It’s late.”

She doesn’t argue that demons don’t need to sleep. She doesn’t protest when Crowley tumbles into bed in a full evening dress. The demon throws a lace gloved hand across Aziraphine and pulls her close.

* * *

A reek of sulphur startles her awake. _Demon_ , her training tells her. She finds she can’t move, can’t make a sound, and struggles vainly against the force holding her. Just out of her sight, she hears the scrape of a heavy boot against the floor. Crowley’s heat is no longer beside her.

“You look a bit glowy,” a voice grumbles.

“Drained her recently,” comes Crowley’s easy answer.

Aziraphine stops struggling. Forces herself not to panic. They don’t know yet. They haven’t come for her.

“Good job,” says the second demon, and the boots clunk their way across the floor to the side of the bed, eclipsing the moonlight and throwing their heavy shadow over Aziraphine. “How does she taste?”

“Like love and light,” Crowley scoffs, and she’s aiming for dismissive, but Aziraphine hears the catch in her voice.

“Your sisters say they’re best just after they’ve been broken, when the light turns. Rich as blood but unlike anything you’ve ever tasted before. At least you have that to look forward to.”

She’s glad she can’t scream because there’s suddenly a grubby hand in her hair, and the sulphur smell threatens to overwhelm her. It’s a fight just to keep her eyes closed and feign sleep. The demon tugs at her hair until they can see her face.

“This one looks fucking cherubic,” they comment, and Aziraphine can hear the sneer of disdain. “She put up a fight at all?”

“A bit. But she was easy enough,” Crowley purrs.

“Good. Be careful when you finally break her. You know how our master likes these ones.”

“Of course, your disgrace.”

“And any sign of the tome?”

“If you hadn’t noticed, there’s a lot of books to go through between here and downstairs.”

The demon drops Aziraphine and stalks back to Crowley. “Get it done. Shouldn’t be that hard. It’d shine with holiness or some tripe. You’ve had how long?”

“I understand, your disgrace, but performing a temptation on a Nephilim is a delicate—”

There’s a thump followed by the sound of books tumbling from the shelves and spilling open across the floor. “I don’t think you do. If there’s something you neglect, Crowley, something you don’t tell us, you won’t look forward to your reward.”

“I just need to work on her a little longer, and I’m sure she’ll spill everything to me. They always do. I know how to run a temptation, Hastur,” Crowley growls. “Now back off.”

“For your sake, I hope that you do. You’re running out of time.”

The sulfur smell seems to evaporate all at once. She finds that the force holding her down relents shortly after, and she curls protectively into herself. Crowley, back in her modern clothes, kneels at her bedside and smoothes her disheveled hair. Aziraphine flinches at the touch, and the demon draws back.

“What are they going to do to me?” Aziraphine asks.

“I won’t let that happen, remember?”

“What did they mean? What do they do to people like me? Why do they want the tome?”

“You don’t need to know that. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“But the other Nephilim. The ones who fall on the hunt—“

“No, Aziraphine.”

She thinks of Uriel. What would have happened to her if Gabriel hadn’t shown up? What ‘reward’ do they have planned for Crowley when she inevitably fails the task they’ve given her? Aziraphine doesn’t often think of violence, but the words are spilling out before she’s thought of what she’s saying.

“I’ll kill them if them come back. I’ll kill them and your sleep paralysis trick won’t stop me.”

Crowley blinks, the only expression of her surprise. “Don’t make yourself seem like a threat to them. Not now. Trust me.”

“I have been trusting you.”

“I know.”

“When they come for you, I’ll kill them.”

Crowley sighs. “You can’t fend off all of Hell. I’m not doing this so that you can go all avenging angel and get yourself killed.” She pauses, then says low as if someone will overhear, “If you want to do something, if you trust me, then let’s make a plan, just you and me.”

Aziraphine turns to catch the glow of Crowley’s eyes in the moonlight. “That means you’ll have to tell me what Hell wants.”

“I know. I will.”

* * *

Aziraphine is cradling the tome in her hands, laying down select wards that won’t harm or banish Crowley when the demon says, “I thought we could have some normal morning sex as a prelude to our plotting.”

Aziraphine ignores her, frowning down at the tome as she recites the final line of runes. When she holds up her hand, there’s a pulse of white-blue light through the room that blankets every surface before it dissipates. Crowley shivers at the effect but nothing more.

“I hate that,” she says. “Feels like a swarm of little crawly things.”

Aziraphine closes the tome and settles it back into its place at the bottom of the chest. “You can’t complain about it much when it’ll keep your coworker from paying us another visit.”

When Aziraphine turns to Crowley, she’s holding up what Aziraphine _thinks_ might be a dildo—a deep red monstrosity with conjoined phalluses and two heads. She doesn’t give Crowley the satisfaction of a reaction. “Why do they want the tome?” she asks when she rejoins Crowley on the bed.

“As you humans say, knowledge is power. If we destroy all the tomes, we weaken your ability to pass on your knowledge. The less that future Nephilim know, the easier our work becomes. The more we know about what you know, the stronger we become.”

“That’s why you were so shocked when I showed you the tome. I’d handed you half your objective, and you didn’t even have to do anything.”

Crowley taps the dildo thoughtfully against her lips as if it’s a mere ink pen. “It was the trust that shocked me, but yes.”

“It didn’t even cross your mind to take it.”

“When I realized I _didn’t_ consider it, I did think that I must be bloody losing it.”

Aziraphine sighs, finally gives in, and asks the question Crowley obviously wants her to ask. “Why is it shaped like that?”

“It’s a devil phallus? Because I’m a devil.”

“It seems a bit...large, don’t you think?”

And this is when Crowley leans in and licks the line of Aziraphine’s throat with her serpent tongue. “Of course. I want to see how much you can take when you’re wet for me.”

“Oh,” says Aziraphine.

“I love that look on you, the way your surprised innocence turns to hunger.” Then, abruptly, “Take off your clothes. I want you on your hands and knees.”

Aziraphine complies, surprised to find she can already feel her pulse between her thighs.

Crowley leans over her. “Good girl,” she murmurs, tracing a finger over one of Aziraphine’s nipples. She whimpers at the touch and only feels slightly embarrassed for it. “And so responsive,” praises Crowley. “I know you’ll do well for me.”

The simple statement sends another surge of warmth through her, and she moans. Crowley slips a hand between Aziraphine’s thighs. “Already so wet, I see.” She presses her fingers, slick with Aziraphine’s arousal, to her mouth. “I want to see you taste yourself,” Crowley says. Aziraphine opens her mouth obediently, takes Crowley’s fingers, and licks the taste of her own arousal from Crowley’s hand, holding eye contact the entire time. There’s a blush rising in her cheeks when she’s done. “Absolutely filthy,” Crowley teases, pinching Aziraphine’s nipple until she cries out. Then she’s kissing her, licking indulgently into Aziraphine’s mouth until Aziraphine is panting and her hands are clenched in the sheets.

“I’ll finger you first.” She holds up her right hand and looks as if she’s performed some particularly clever trick. Aziraphine is confused until Crowley says, “Magic manicure. No claws today.”

Aziraphine giggles. Her face feels hot, and her head is light.

“I want to know if I can hurt you and how much,” Crowley says next, all teasing gone. The question and look together send another jolt of arousal through Aziraphine that she will have to examine later.

For now, she says, “What do you want to do?”

The breathless way she asks earns her a grin. “You have such beautiful skin. I want to spank you until it’s red. I want to break your skin with my fangs and taste your blood.” Crowley’s eyes seem to glow with her excitement at the idea.

“Yes,” says Aziraphine simply.

“Your safe word?”

“Camellia,” she says and blushes.

Crowley traces a finger down the length of her spine, teasingly slow. Even this small touch is too much, and Aziraphine arches into it. Crowley halts in her path and plants her palm firmly but gently at the center of Aziraphine’s back.

“Don’t move,” she commands, voice whisper-soft against Aziraphine’s skin. “Think of it as a test.” She can almost hear the wink.

Aziraphine doesn’t think this should thrill her as someone who’s lived with strict control her entire life, but it does. She’s happy to do this with Crowley, happy to be this for Crowley. She wants to please her and be told that she’s good. For once in her life, she wants to be good enough. The irony of wanting a demon to affirm her goodness—her _worthiness_ —isn’t lost on her, but Crowley is so much more than a demon. In so little time, she’s made herself seem like the piece of Aziraphine’s life she’d been longing for and unable to name. If only she knew for certain they’d have more time. The fact that they might not makes her desperate to not only have this moment but to savor it, however ill-advised and badly timed it might be.

She’d never have jumped into such an intimate relationship with a human so fast. But Crowley’s bold strength seems to have awakened her own.

“I love how soft you are, and I’ve never told you how much I love it,” Crowley says. Her hand slips down the curve of Aziraphine’s backside to stroke her inner thigh. She squeezes, hums, trails her fingers back up to slick them through the moisture there.

Aziraphine’s gasp twists into a sharp cry at the sudden pain piercing the flesh of her hip. It lasts for seconds, and then it’s gone. Not numbed but simply not painful. Crowley’s tongue laps at her skin, and she moans before withdrawing. “I love the taste of your blood. Still okay?” she asks.

Aziraphine nods once, and Crowley slips fully behind her and out of her peripheral vision. She just barely stops herself from instinctively turning her head to follow Crowley. Three quick slaps to her left buttock follow, and she’s so focused on the novelty of the pain, the fact that she’s so swollen and dripping down her thighs, that she’s unprepared when Crowley thrusts her fingers inside her. She cries out and her back arches, breaking her pose. Crowley tuts and uses the hand slick with Aziraphine’s own wetness to deliver ten hard slaps to her backside.

“Want to try again?” she asks darkly, but the effect is ruined by the giggle that follows.

“Yes,” Aziraphine sighs.

“Good,” Crowley says, stroking along Aziraphine’s lower back. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. Messed you up on purpose.”

It’s gradual this time. She sighs into the sensation of Crowley’s fingers sliding into her, and Crowley lays a comforting hand on her hip as she begins to thrust into her. The wet sound of Crowley’s hand moving inside her makes her body flush, and it would seem obscene if she weren’t so awash in pleasure. When Crowley uses her other hand to massage firm circles into her clit, it’s all she can do to keep her limbs planted firmly and hold her pose. Somehow, she lasts through it, and when she gasps out that she’s at the edge, Crowley withdraws again.

“Then I think you’re ready,” she says, her one slick hand resting on Aziraphine’s hip.

Crowley leans over Aziraphine as she eases the dildo inside her, and there’s the scrape of her fangs on Aziraphine’s back. “You’ll take it all for me, won’t you?” she says, voice low.

“Yes,” says Aziraphine. She wants to please.

 _Monstrous_ was the correct word, after all. It’s not the length that challenges her, as she’d first thought, but the girth. Crowley goes slow, easing it slightly deeper on each thrust, teasing Aziraphine’s clit until she can fully relax around it. Her arms tremble and ache at this point. Her shoulders have developed a pinched ache. Crowley praises her through it, whispering endearments against her skin, until the dildo is fully buried in her. She feels stretched, full, exhausted in the best way.

Crowley’s mouth is at her ear. “You’re perfect. I want you to come for me,” she says, withdrawing the dildo and turning her full attention to Aziraphine’s clit.

And shortly after, Aziraphine does come, and Crowley’s name fills her mouth. The demon strokes her back through it, pressing her cheek into her shoulder. “You’re so perfect,” she sighs.

A hyperawareness of Crowley’s presence—not merely her closeness but her essence—spreads through her like fire. Without the drain on her energy, she can concentrate on Crowley this time, feel the way her energy moves, the way it reaches for her with a sense of possession—something one might expect from a demon—but there are flashes of something else. A softer devotion. Her light leaps to mingle with it.

“Crowley, I—”

The demon feels the shift in spiritual pressure and moves away just as two pairs of ethereal wings burst into existence.

“Holy _fuck_ , angel,” Crowley breathes sharply. “Didn’t know you could upgrade to four. You’re going to be a seraph by the end of this.”

Aziraphine sits back with a heavy sigh, briefly thinks of teasing Crowley about the irony of saying ‘holy fuck, angel’ to a Nephilim. It seems silly to her that she could surprise Crowley, cool suave Crowley with her silly monster dildos. Aziraphine’s limbs shake from the exertion, but for a fleeting moment, her wings feel strong.

The plummet is sharp when it catches her, and it overwhelms. Without the influence of Crowley’s aura to stave it off, shame follows close on the heels of her orgasm. She’s barely out of the heat of her climax when it prickles at her chest and makes her feel brittle, diminished. The flow of radiance ruptures with the force of it. Crowley is still staring at her two pairs of wings when a shiver runs through them, gossamer-fine cracks in the light, and they shatter like glass, their shards fading away on the air.

She cries, and it’s messy, and Crowley holds her through it.

Crowley apologizes, and Aziraphine shakes her head, manages to say through her sobs, “I just wanted to feel good with you.” An ache rises in her to atone, and Crowley holds her tighter, sensing the destructive desire hook into her.

“I’m going to stay with you until you’re safe,” says Crowley.

She runs a luxurious bath for her, puts on a record she finds of Chopin’s nocturnes, and sits beside the bathtub, their hands clasped beneath the bubbles until the water begins to cool. Aziraphine’s face is puffy from crying when she whispers, “Thank you.”

“Anything, angel,” Crowley says. “Anything.”

* * *

They leave for the park on foot. Aziraphine feels so exposed outdoors, but Crowley insists that the walk will do her good—change of scenery, a necessary reset. “I know it’s not what you _want_ , but I sense it’s what you need,” she’d said.

Out of the shadow of the tall buildings, she does begin to feel better. A cold wind gusts off the river. Not many people are out. A couple joggers finish their runs shortly after Aziraphine and Crowley arrive. Even the gulls seem to have stayed home. It’s quiet without them. The sunlight has already started to take on the muted quality of winter, the earth tilting away from warmth. They face the water, and Aziraphine tries to breathe. The tome is heavy in her shoulder bag, a weight she can no longer afford to leave behind. The past is creeping back on her like a rising tide, and soon enough, she’ll have to choose to walk into it.

“Do you want to talk or do you need quiet?” asks Crowley.

“I don’t know,” Aziraphine responds, so they’re quiet.

Crowley and the wind and the sunlight and the water are her entire world for a few precious moments, and she lets herself have this peace. The ache in her chest eases. She reaches for the demon’s hand, and Crowley lets herself be held. Aziraphine feels Crowley’s gaze on her, a question, but only the river fills her vision.

“We can go now,” she says eventually, turning for the pedestrian bridge back into the city. Crowley follows her direction. They pause halfway across, and Aziraphine leans against the rails, peering over into the waves. She forces herself to take a deep breath. Crowley joins her side and tentatively breaks the silence.

“I’ve been thinking,” she begins. “What do you feel when you come? Just before the wings manifest?”

Aziraphine shoots her a look, but when she searches Crowley’s face, there’s no suggestive teasing there. She’s sharp in her earnestness.

“I feel close to you, and I feel what you feel.”

“Huh,” says Crowley. “That it?”

“Yes.” _Do you not know the name for this? You feel like love_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapters are very plot-heavy, so it might take me a bit longer to update, but I have Plans.
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://arcafira.tumblr.com/)!


	4. The Spine of a Feather, Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans are upset and hastily redrawn.

It’s there on the step when they return, a glinting disk of silver imprinted with the wings of the Fell family’s crest.

“That looks—”

Aziraphine swipes it up and pockets it as if Crowley hasn’t already seen it. She looks about as if expecting someone, but there’s only the small empty lot behind the bookshop and the back of another shop across from that. “I’d like to braid your hair,” she says, not at all what Crowley expects her to say. “It’s so beautiful, and I’d just like to touch it before—before . . .”

“Tell me what’s going on, angel.”

Aziraphine gestures to the steps. “I need to sit,” she says, bracing against the railing to lower herself to a seat. Crowley settles on the step below hers. “Can I?” Aziraphine asks.

Crowley offers her best attempt at a flirtatious hair flip, but she’s too tense for it to look genuine. For a few quiet moments, Aziraphine combs her fingers through Crowley’s luxurious curls and memorizes the way the sun turns them fiery. She separates a section on her left side and begins to braid with shaking hands.

Crowley makes to turn her head more but stops herself at the last second so as not to disrupt Aziraphine’s work. “No one’s ever braided my hair before,” she says.

“We need the plan now,” Aziraphine whispers. “There’s no time.”

“Right—er.” Crowley pauses as if to fortify herself. “So hear me out. It’s not great, but it’s all I’ve got.” And so, with Aziraphine’s hands in her hair, she begins to tell her everything, starting with the demons’ objective. “They’re after your family’s relics. The only weapons that can truly kill and not merely discorporate us.”

“Like my sword?” asks Aziraphine.

Crowley turns abruptly to face her, pulling the unfinished braid from her hands. “You never mentioned that _you_ wielded the _sword_.”

“It’s the one I showed you in the tome, remember? Inherited from the angels themselves, flaming radiance and all.”

“That’s—that’s great actually. They’ll never expect one of the relics to be somewhere other than the Fell estate.”

Aziraphine blushes. “I left it at home,” she mumbles.

“You . . . Sorry?”

“I left it at home, Crowley! I told you, I turned my back on that life. I didn’t want to be a hunter anymore.” She barely stops herself from saying, _I’m not worthy of it_.

“No, no, ‘s fine. I get it.” Crowley runs a distracted hand through her hair and catches her fingers in the braid. “Right, so, our big problem is that I’m supposed to have kept you from going back to the estate so that we have one less demon hunter to worry about getting around.”

“And you were supposed to have my tome.”

“Which means I’ve fucked up on both counts, but I think—”

“ _Crowley_ ,” an unfamiliar voice speaks from somewhere within Crowley’s blazer.

The demon winces and draws out her phone as if it’s an unstable bomb that could explode at any moment. She looks at Aziraphine meaningfully and puts a finger to her lips. “Yeah, boss,” she answers without putting it to her ear, suddenly all confidence.

“Ligur botched the second stage of the plan. Set off some wards that alerted the entire family to our presence. They’re spooked. We need to move now before they erect defenses.”

“But—do we know where they keep the relics?”

“We have a vague location. Looks like they have a network of underground chambers. What I need to know is if your part of the plan is covered. They’ll have recalled her by now, and we don’t need to stumble upon a Nephilim while we’re scrambling to regroup.”

When Crowley hesitates a beat too long, the voice returns with an edge. “Don’t tell me you’ve not managed to break her yet. Do you even have the tome?”

Crowley’s eyes dart to Aziraphine and away. She stands. Grips the stair rail until her knuckles whiten. “Look, I’d have had her by the time we planned, it’s just l—”

“We expected some amount of difficulty given her nature, but a succubus of your prowess should have been able to claim her by now. She’s out of practice—”

“I know.”

“—and alone. Where is she now, Crowley?”

The demon grits her teeth, and Aziraphine can almost hear her biting back a growl. “Lord Dagon, I have it handled.”

“ _Where_ is she, Crowley?”

Crowley turns her back to Aziraphine, and she wants to pull her back, realizes that she can weather this easier if she can at least see Crowley’s face. It’s only now, as she’s beginning to feel desperate for air, that she realizes that she’s been holding her breath, that she’s been gripping the grimy iron stair with all her strength.

“She found the token before I could get to her. She slipped me.”

The pause that follows feels dangerous. “So she’s on her way back to the estate.”

“Yes,” Crowley breathes as if it hurts her.

“When.”

“Just—just now.”

“I hope, for your sake, that you have sights on her.”

Crowley looks up into the innocently blue sky and shoves one hand into her pocket.

“I do, yeah.”

“We may have to accept losing her soul. Kill her if you must. We can’t risk this family reunion.”

“Yes, Lord Dagon,” Crowley says, voice flat.

“Don’t fail us.”

A static screech follows, and the phone is quiet. Aziraphine rises, shaking, to her feet. Crowley is within reach; she could extend her arm and touch her. She doesn’t. She waits for Crowley.

“We have to make this look real,” Crowley says quietly. “I have to attack you. You have to fight me. Of course I’d let you get away, but . . . ”

“I can’t.”

Finally, Crowley turns. Her face is carefully blank. “If you want to go, I’ll let you go. And I won’t challenge you. I’ll tell Beelzebub I couldn’t.”

“I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourself for me,” Aziraphine hurriedly amends when she realizes how deeply Crowley’s misunderstood. “I mean that I don’t know how I could possibly make attacking you look real.”

“You still have the dagger, don’t you?”

Any other time, Aziraphine would have blushed at the memory associated with it. “I put it away with the tome.”

“Discorporate me. When I attack you, use the dagger. You’ve trained to do this. They’ll see that you’re stronger than me, and I’ll be reprimanded, but I’ll survive.”

“Won’t it hurt you?” Aziraphine asks, knowing that—based on the look of the demons who’ve met with a blessed blade—it hurts terribly. “What if they don’t let you have another body to come back?”

“Eh, it’ll sting,” says Crowley, wielding dismissiveness as her own weapon. Crowley has to know too; she has to know how much this kind of discorporation hurts a soul. “At least if I get trapped down in Hell for a decade doing menial labor, I have the reassurance that you Nephilim are long-lived.”

It’s the first time they’ve ever touched close to this, the fact that Crowley will most likely continue to live forever while Aziraphine has a century and a half at best. It’s too much to think about along with their immediate threats, and so she doesn’t. “And what if I can’t discorporate you?” she asks, comforted only by the bloodlessness of the word _discorporate_. She has seen discorporation many times over, and it is as bloody and visceral as killing a body—because that’s what it is.

Discussing this on such a beautiful day feels surreal. Only hours ago, they were in bed together, the only thing in the world each other’s bodies. Only yesterday, they went on a date. Only days before, Crowley miraculously healed her and made her feel worthy of care. The token of her family’s crest feels heavy and cold in her pocket.

“If you can’t discorporate me, then we need to have someone come to your aid. Make it look like I could be reasonably overwhelmed if I don’t leave. I don’t _think_ they expect me to take on more than you by yourself. I’m only a succubus. We’re known for our powers of temptation and seduction, not strength.” Crowley thinks. “Let’s do both. I’ll meet you in the surrounding woods. You see me, you run. I’ll let you get close enough to the house that someone could hear you scream and come running. Meanwhile, you need to at least make a show of attempting to discorporate me when I catch you. We do our thing until there are others within sight, then I’ll back off.”

“I haven’t fought in years, Crowley,” Aziraphine says. “And I’ve sparred against my family, yes, but I’ve never attempted to kill anyone I care about. I don’t even think I could pretend.”

“You’re not killing me. Don’t think of it that way. We’re just—making it look like I gave a shit about my job.”

Aziraphine shivers, can feel in her hands the memory of flesh and bone resisting and giving way under the force of her sword. “I know I can’t do it.”

“The alternative is worse for you, Aziraphine.”

She forces herself not to look away. “The alternative?”

“If you can’t make your half look convincing, I can.” Crowley says it so gently, like an offering, like she’s sparing her something, but it still manages to chill her. “From what Dagon said, our original plan is still open if I feel I can make it work.”

Aziraphine swallows. “If you do it, I don’t want to remember. Can you make that happen?”

Crowley lets her breath out in a whoosh, takes a backward step down the stairs, and looks out over the empty lot. “Fuck. Okay, new plan,” she says, but doesn’t follow with anything.

Aziraphine’s phone chimes, and her heart stutters into a frantic rhythm. Crowley doesn’t so much as blink, consumed as she is by her thoughts. When Aziraphine taps into her phone, she sees the name of the sender and goes still. _Gabriel_. A name she’s not said aloud since she left home. Her hands shake so badly that it takes her an entire minute to type back. _Yes. Received summons_.

“No time for another plan,” she says, moving to pocket her phone. It slips from her hand and through a gap in the stairs. She watches, unmoved, as it plummets to the concrete below. Halfway down, it vanishes, and then Crowley’s extending it to her. She takes it in both hands and squeezes its hard edges into her palms. “I need to find a way there now.”

Crowley finally turns back to her. “I’d love to drive you, but, well.”

“Of course. I’ll ask Ana,” Aziraphine says. “And if you can come back to me after all this, meet me at the gazebo on the abandoned adjoining property.”

Crowley nods, the muscle in her jaw tight. Then she’s suddenly stepping back up to meet Aziraphine and clutching her into a desperate kiss. “After we meet at the estate, don’t remember me that way. Remember me like this. Please,” Crowley says against her lips.

All her words are gone. She wants to cling to Crowley and breathe in the smoky warmth of her and not move forward into this future that’s been thrust upon them. It’s Crowley who grasps Aziraphine’s hands and pushes her towards the door. “Don’t forget the tome,” she says, and then she’s away down the stairs, her easy saunter turned stiff.

Aziraphine dials Ana as she grabs her shoulder bag and begins distractedly shoving in whatever items of clothing her hands land on. She stuffs the tome in on top of it all. Ana picks up in three rings.

“Lucky you caught me on my day off,” she says, and the unworried ease of her tone confuses Aziraphine for a moment.

“Ana,” she says, words a rush. “I need a huge favor.”

“What’s wrong?” Ana asks, serious in an instant.

“Family emergency, I’m afraid. And I don’t have a car—”

“Oh, of course! I’ll be right over. You’re home, right?”

Ana is at her doorstep in minutes, her blue compact waiting in the lot below. Aziraphine thanks her profusely, and when they’re settled in the car, Ana asks where they’re going.

Aziraphine worries the shoulder strap of her bag. “My family home, actually.”

Ana frowns, and Aziraphine realizes the small amount of information she’s given Ana about her family life will work against her now. “Of course I’ll take you where you need, but will you be safe there?” Ana asks.

“I won’t be alone,” Aziraphine says. “Someone outside my family is meeting me there. It’s just—I need to go now.”

Ana steers them onto the road and considers her next question. “Is it the woman you’ve been hanging out with the past few days?”

“Yes,” Aziraphine says, deciding that there’s so much she can’t tell Ana—or things she’s felt like she shouldn’t tell Ana—that she might as well be honest with this.

“Has the family stuff been what’s had you on edge recently?”

Aziraphine nods.

“I’m glad you’ll be there with someone else.” Then, “How do you know her?”

“She’s— Ana, can you sense anything about her?”

Of all the humans Aziraphine who call themselves witches, Ana seems genuine about her abilities.

“I didn’t want to say anything about it since you seemed to not want me to ask about the whole thing. But yes. She seems . . .” Ana searches for a word. “Not _evil_ —that’s such a heavy word—but she’s weighed down by a lot of negative things. Maybe even dangerous things. But then when I saw you two on the sidewalk yesterday, you looked so happy. And she seemed different. Lighter. Because of you.”

“And what about me? Since you’ve known me, what have you sensed?”

“Well, you never wanted me to do a reading for you or anything like that. I think I can understand why now.” She glances briefly from the road to Aziraphine. “Energetically, you’re the opposite of her. Your aura is unlike any other person’s I’ve seen. But you’re weighed down too.”

“You believe in spirits?” Aziraphine asks.

“Where is this going? Are you going to tell me you’re, I don’t know, some reincarnated warrior with deep past-life memories?” she says with an anxious laugh.

“Crowley and I—” She accidentally says her name without thinking. “—neither of us are quite human. Well, I’m more human than she is if we’re thinking about this on a spectrum.”

“Oh,” says Ana and seems to focus very intensely on the road. “What a thing to learn while driving.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve quite imposed on your day.”

“Not at all. I’ve been asking questions, after all. I’m glad you feel you can trust me with this much.”

“And thank you for always reaching out to me even when I’ve not been great about answering.”

“It makes sense that you wouldn’t associate much with us normal humans if you’re, you know, something else.”

Aziraphine realizes she’s been worrying her ring so intensely that she’s made the skin beneath sensitive. She forces herself to stop. “Nephilim,” she says quietly. “I’m Nephilim.”

“So you’re . . . part angel?”

“Distantly related.”

“And that makes Crowley?”

“A demon.” She forces herself to say it as if it’s just another word.

This draws Ana’s eyes from the road again. Aziraphine can see the questions forming, but they’re approaching the on ramp, and a focused silence settles until they’re up to speed on the highway.

“You seem like an unlikely pair.”

Aziraphine shakes her head. “You don’t know just _how_ unlikely. The family business I said I didn’t want a part of— It’s demon hunting.”

Ana opens her mouth. Closes it. Tries again. “So you’re meeting your demon girlfriend at your demon-hunting family’s house?”

“It’s complicated.” Aziraphine chooses not to comment on the _girlfriend_ bit, but her answer could refer to either part of Ana’s question.

“Sounds like,” Ana sighs. When several cars pass them, Ana glances down at the speedometer and realizes she’s fifteen below the limit. She speeds up. “Now I’m worried for both of you.”

“We have to,” Aziraphine says. “I could lose her if we don’t.”

They’re quiet for a long stretch of highway, just the noise of the rushing air, the steady hum of the engine, and the wall of goldening trees on either side. She notices the smoky incense scent of the car’s interior for the first time since getting in, and it makes her ache for Crowley.

“You don’t have to tell me more, but . . . text me? To let me know you’re both okay.”

“I will.”

“And your bookshop? Need me to check on anything?”

She’d forgotten all about the shop. “Ah, yes.” She drops her keyring for the shop in Ana’s cupholder. “If you could bring in the mail. That’s really all that should need tending to. I’ll only be gone for, well, a couple days.” She points. “It’ll be this exit here.”

There’s nothing around it, no signs for gas stations or restaurants. They leave behind the openness of farmland and the trees close in again.

“Your family really is out in the middle of nowhere,” Ana comments.

“Secrets will make you do that. The original family house in England is also secluded but close enough to a big city. London, in their case. And we have warded safe houses within the city where we can stay before or after a hunt. It’s all well thought out. Strategic. Even more so now that Gabriel is the family head.” She goes back to twisting her ring even though it hurts now. “We’ve never had this much coordination between both houses.”

“Is it okay for you to be telling me all this?”

Aziraphine shrugs. “It’s general information. Things the opposition already knows.”

They take a sharp and poorly marked curve, and Ana taps a little too hard on the brakes. “Sorry,” she says, grimacing.

“There’ll be an unmarked road just up here on the right. Quite Narrow. It’ll wind through the trees for a couple more miles, and then we should be at the gate.” She fights to keep her voice level, trying and failing at staving off the tangle of emotions that she knows will come with simply seeing the gates again, let alone thinking of what she needs to face beyond them.

Ana slows to a crawl and finds the path, overgrown and intentionally easy to miss. It’s unpaved, and Aziraphine feels the need to apologize for how rough the ride suddenly becomes.

“If you want to just drop me here,” she starts.

“No way. I offered to drive you and I’ll take you as far as I can.” She tries to shoot Aziraphine a smile, but the lines of her face are tight. “I feel like I’m turning you over to an executioner or something. Not helping you.”

Aziraphine is quick to reassure her. “You are helping.”

For the rest of the drive up to the gate, they each sink into their own thoughts. Aziraphine worries the strap of her bag, pressing wrinkles down the length of the fabric. Soon, she will see Crowley, and she will be different. _Remember me like this. Please_ , Crowley had said. Aziraphine tries to remember their first meetings, the fact that her fear was a result of what she knew Crowley was and the effect of her aura. This encounter would be different even from that.

The way ahead widens, and around the curve, a fleet of sleek black vehicles line the space in front of a tall iron gate. Ana lets out a breath at the sight. “Glad you told me what you did or I might think your family was mafia.” She eases the car into park and turns to Aziraphine. “You really will be okay?” she asks, and it’s then that Aziraphine’s awareness prickles faintly.

She glances at the car’s mirrors, a quick flick of her eyes that makes Ana frown again. Two demons are trying very hard to suppress their auras—and one is practically tapping her on the shoulder. Crowley.

“Yes, dear,” she says distractedly.

Ana’s hand lands on hers. “Aziraphine—”

“Thank you for doing this on such short notice. You have been such a dear friend, and I should have reached out to you more.”

“You sound like you’re saying—”

“We should hang out more. When I get back. Yes.”

Ana does not look reassured, but Aziraphine needs her to go. “Please do have a safe drive back. As I said, I’ll text you,” she says, gathering her bag and hurrying from the car.

“Okay. Yeah. I’d like that.”

Aziraphine tries her best to smile as she bends to make eye contact with Ana through the open door. “Be safe,” she says, warding the car and Ana with a discreet flick of her wrist. Ana notices, nods. Aziraphine shuts the door, turns to the gates, and does not look back until the hum of Ana’s motor has faded. Then, with an unusually steady hand, she grips the cold metal of the gate and lets herself through.

The sharp clang of the lock once she’s on the other side cleaves everything into a sharp before and after. The sun is beginning its fall towards the horizon, and the rustle of dead leaves at her feet is the only noise as she walks through the trees. The estate isn’t within sight yet. She’ll walk for another half mile.

Crowley gives her a metaphysical tap every few steps. _I’m here_. The only comfort she can provide, but it’s also foreboding. They both know what comes at the end of it.

When she’s nearly within sight of the house, Crowley vanishes, a blip on her radar that has simply ceased to be. Her step falters. She wants to postpone this. She wants to turn back. She steps forward.

Into the path ahead of her, Crowley emerges from the trees, silent as a shadow. Aziraphine stops and at the sight of her almost lets her name slip, but there’s the barest shake of the demon’s head. This is not a moment of reunion. This is not her Crowley. But the unfinished braid is still there, frizzy and tousled as if Crowley’s been running her hands through her hair and catching her fingers on it, forgetting again and again that it’s there but deciding each time that it’s worth keeping.

 _Run_ , Crowley mouths, and Aziraphine does, gripping the strap of her bag in one hand and withdrawing the dagger with the other.

She screams for help, but the words are too strained and don’t carry. In her bag, the book thumps hard against her hip as she runs. Yellow eyes flash in the trees, there and gone. A streak of red hair like a fire threatening to overtake her. She screams again, screams for her sister Uriel as she’d once cried out to Aziraphine for help all those years ago. Her boots slide on the fallen leaves, and just as she loses her footing, something catches her from behind. She’s slammed back into a nearby tree, knocking the air from her lungs and cutting short her call for help. Suddenly, she’s looking up into the glow of Crowley’s eyes, and they’re utterly cold and empty of recognition.

Aziraphine breathes hard. She didn’t imagine it like this. When Crowley told her it had to look real, she didn’t think she’d feel as if she’d lost her. She didn’t think she’d feel this panic.

Too late, she remembers the dagger in her hand and flicks it upward only for Crowley to knock her hand away, sending the dagger flying into a pile of leaves. She screams for help again, genuinely this time, and Crowley covers her mouth with a sharp hand, the nails biting into her cheek. She screams against it and is surprised to feel tears track down her face. Crowley rips her hand away as if the touch of them burns and throws Aziraphine away from her. She isn’t prepared for it and doesn’t catch herself. She scrapes a shin, an elbow, against an exposed root, but the pain doesn’t register.

All she can focus on is Crowley looming, advancing, and their plan is gone from her mind. She is scared, and this feels real.

“Crowley.” The name slips from her mouth. A plea. That stops her, and for a second, there’s _her_ Crowley, mirroring her own fear. Then she’s hit with the wash of her aura. Time skips. Crowley is suddenly crouched above her, and Aziraphine’s limbs are heavy. She tries to lift an arm to resist, but Crowley catches it and pins her down. It seems like a dark parody of their first meeting, a flirtation replaced with a threat. She tries to meet Crowley’s gaze, but there’s the second piece of this plan. The part she’d requested and forgotten. Crowley knocks her out, and the world is dark.

* * *

Her dreams are empty. She feels empty. How long she floats in and out of sleep, she doesn’t know. When she stirs for the final time, something solid and heavy lands near her head.

“Why did I give you this if you can’t hold on to it?” A voice. Uriel.

She blinks open her eyes from one darkness into another. The air is thick with incense, and it makes her feel sick. All smoke makes her think of Crowley. She tries to sit up. She feels so weak.

Uriel’s weight settles on the edge of the bed. “Looks like that succubus came back for you.”

Aziraphine’s pulse pounds in her head. She fights to stay upright. In the low light, the dagger glints next to her pillow. She can’t think of anything to say for a moment.

“Did you get a good look at her when she attacked you?”

“Wh-what happened to her?” Aziraphine manages eventually.

“Michael and Gabriel were going to go after her, but we needed to get you safe. She must’ve been desperate, attempting a killing feed so close to the estate. You were in bad condition.”

“How many days has it been?” she asks, because the heaviness of her body tells her she’s been asleep for days.

“Three. You kept saying a name in your sleep when anyone came near you. Sounded like ‘Crowley.’”

A cold weight settles in her stomach. They can’t have that name. Her family can’t have that name. “A good friend in the city. She’s the one who drove me.”

“She’s lucky the succubus was only after you. What were you thinking bringing an outsider so close to the estate?”

 _I didn’t want to be alone with this secret anymore_.

“She wanted to help.” Aziraphine gives up on trying to stay seated and reclines back onto the pillows.

Uriel watches her. “You’re horribly out of practice, but I feel safer having you back. Not having to worry for you.”

She’s too tired to broach this, but thankfully Uriel doesn’t push. Aziraphine feels for the sides of the bed and finds that it’s narrower than her own. “Are we not upstairs?” This room, now that she’s looking at the perimeter of it, is only big enough for the bed, a simple wooden chair, and a dusty shelf. A single candle burns on a middle shelf. There are no windows.

“Because you’ve been a target, Gabriel thought it safest if you weren’t.”

“So I’m down in the crypt for safekeeping. Like a relic.”

“Speaking of which,” says Uriel, drawing something long and heavy into her lap. Though she can’t see it well, Aziraphine immediately knows what it is. “Gabriel wants you to start practice again as soon as you’re able to stand. If they’re going to attack us on our own land, you need to be able to defend yourself.”

“I’m never going to be like I was before. Especially not in a matter of days. I don’t know how you went back to it after that, Uriel. I can’t fail you again, and I know I will.”

Uriel stands and sets the sword in her place. “You never failed me,” she whispers. “Gabriel shouldn’t have—”

The door swings open, and Gabriel’s familiar silhouette fills the frame. Even in the low light, she’s just as Aziraphine remembers her—impeccable lavender suit and slicked back hair, even in her own home. A couple beats pass before she says anything, and Aziraphine hates her sudden urge to crawl under the bed and out of her gaze.

This silence is on purpose. This silence is a test.

Gabriel steps into the room, and Aziraphine notices the familiar wooden box in her hands. Her throat tightens. Uriel bows and excuses herself. Aziraphine wants to call after her to stay, please stay.

“Good to see you awake,” she says first, an imitation of a gentle parent. Then, “A succubus attacked you, yes?” As if she didn’t know. As if she wasn’t there.

Aziraphine nods, unable to find words in her mother’s presence.

She sets the box at the foot of the bed. “Make certain you’re strong for the fight ahead,” she says simply, and leaves.

As soon as her steps recede, Aziraphine grabs the thing and shoves it in a dark corner under the bed. Even that much movement is too sudden and strenuous because when she stands, her head goes light and her vision fuzzy. She grips the post of the bed and waits for it to pass. When she looks down at her body, she notices that someone’s changed her clothes. She’s wearing something long and drapey and white, and in a fit of sudden rage, she rips it off over her head and kicks it under the bed with the box. Her bag is in the chair in the corner of the room, and she changes into her favorite soft blue sweater and a pair of wrinkled chinos. The rest of the bag’s contents she dumps out on the bed to see what she thought to pack in her frenzy.

The last thing to fall from the bag, a badly rumpled feather, freezes her breath in her lungs. Black and long as her forearm, she has no doubt who placed it there. She just doesn’t know when she must’ve done it. Its barbs are all askew, and its spine is broken from the weight of everything stuffed on top of it, but as she takes it in her hands, she finds it’s still strikingly beautiful. She settles back on the bed to begin the task of meticulously setting the barbs straight, and when she’s done, she twirls it in her fingers, raises it to her nose, and finds that it still smells faintly of smoke.


	5. Their Own Divine Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Uriel, Aziraphine, and Crowley face the truths they are given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter count has gone up! I'd originally planned to wrap things up with the next chapter, but I like the idea of leaving Crowley and Aziraphine with an epilogue to give those moments of comfort a separate space.

Returning to the moment where her faith—in Gabriel, in her family’s doctrine, in herself—failed her, Aziraphine finds herself back in rural farm country under a punishing summer sun.

On the surface, the Fell family advertises itself as exorcists and ghost hunters. An easy enough way to invite average people to call for their services or pass on word of supernatural activity.

Most hunts are for hauntings.

A teenager performs a summoning on a dare. Someone playing with divination tools gets the attention of a demonic spirit rather than their deceased loved one. New owners of an old home find a suspiciously preserved diary among boxes in the basement.

The job becomes rote, especially for possessions: evacuate the unaffected. Restrain the possessed. Mark their forehead with the appropriate sigil. Ward the building. Exorcise the spirit. Things can diverge from there. The weaker ones can be banished to Hell with words of power. The stronger ones might manifest physically, and that’s when they finally draw weapons. Gabriel’s approach to the job when interacting with humans takes on the energy of a particularly charismatic businessperson, and Aziraphine thinks it’s a wonder people don’t think they’re charlatans. But when a demon manifests into the material plane, the false smile drops away, and Gabriel is all cold glee.

Even the head of the Fell family can fall complacent.

In the place where she lost her faith, the corn rises high, leaves sharp and itchy. Aziraphine doesn’t know how she ended up in the field. There was an exorcism. The exorcism went wrong. They were unprepared for a child’s body to be able to contain a demonic spirit of this magnitude. They were unprepared for the possibility that a demon could possess a Nephilim. Everything in the tome points to the impossibility of demonic possessing divine. But, once out of the child, the spirit immediately goes for Uriel. The world breaks with the force of it.

The house is shaken to its foundation, but Uriel rises unaffected from the debris. The shadow of her new form, dark-winged and oozing bile, briefly eclipses the sun.

Was Aziraphine running away or running to?

The next thing she remembers, the outside world is muffled and the sky is obscured by corn stalks. The only person she believes has ever truly loved her, her beloved sister, faces her between the rows. She does not move with her usual grace. She jerks and snarls. She is fighting an internal battle, and she is losing. Aziraphine is unprepared for the way this tactic strikes her so precisely, the way it immediately and efficiently dismantles all her trained responses. It is perfect in its psychological cruelty. It empties her of rationality, of hope. For once, her mind is clear.

_My sister will kill me. Or I will kill my sister._

Then, garbled, Uriel says Aziraphine’s name. Says it again, clearer, anguished. Then she vanishes, and there’s only the demon in her ruined body, charging.

* * *

Down in the vast stretch of corridors and rooms beneath the Fell estate, stone dampens the living world above to an eerie silence. Armageddon could arrive, and Aziraphine wouldn’t know it. Yet, secreted away in this old crypt, she feels the end of something looming near.

The sparring room is empty, save for Aziraphine. She’s happy to be alone with her thoughts and the once-familiar weight of the sword in her hands. Her sword arm trembles. Her muscles strain to relearn posture and pose. The angelic weapon isn’t heavy as swords go, but years of comfort have diminished her endurance. Then there’s the lingering effect of Crowley having drained so much of her spiritual and physical energy.

It was part of the plan, she tells herself over and over—in the cold spray of the shower, in the dim candlelit room, while pacing the length of cobwebbed corridors. Despite the press of people on the sidewalks and the customers in her shop, she was largely alone in the city, but now she is truly isolated. Uriel brings her food. Gabriel makes her alarming ‘check-ins,’ and the door to the house proper remains warded and bolted against her. She thinks, based on the arrival of meals, that two days have passed.

She’s not trapped. She might not be able to enter the house, but there are unguarded and unwarded subterranean passages that lead off estate grounds. That could lead her to Crowley. Only, she’s not sure if she wants to take them yet. Not sure if she’s strong enough or settled enough. The memory of Crowley’s predatory efficiency, her stalking movements, the merciless focus of her gaze, will not leave Aziraphine. In those moments, she holds the feather and tries to remember warmth. Still, she’s thankful to her past self that she’d thought to map all her potential exits, inking her estimates of their locations and paths into the blank final pages of her tome.

Even now, finding herself back at the place she thought she’d escaped, she doesn’t want to acknowledge the reason why she’d felt compelled to memorize exits all those years ago.

Sheathing the sword, she settles down for a short rest, one knee to the floor. She’s surprised to find herself breathing so hard from cycling through a couple basic forms and resolves to make another attempt just after she catches her breath.

“Why is this demon so specifically interested in you?” comes a voice from behind her.

She whirls to face Gabriel, and the edges of her vision turn dark. Her head swims. She fights against the fear that she will collapse right there and draws herself up. “The one who attacked me?”

Gabriel allows nothing to show on her face, but as with everything, this too is a subtle test. “Uriel says the succubus found and haunted you in the city. Presumably, since Uriel left the dagger with you, we can assume you’ve discorporated her at least once. Yet the demons made another body for her so soon. She must be important for them to be so devoted to keeping her here on earth. She must be skilled if they insist on sending her after one of ours.” She cocks her head expectantly. There’s a correct answer to her questionless question, but Aziraphine knows neither what she’s asking nor its answer and worries that anything she says will endanger Crowley.

“I couldn’t possibly know her rank or the specifics of her orders,” says Aziraphine.

“But you’ve seen her multiple times,” says Gabriel, advancing a step.

If it’d been appropriate, if they’d been sparring, Aziraphine would have fallen into a defensive stance. She resists the instinct. “I have.”

A frown cracks Gabriel’s impassive expression. Something must be very wrong for her control to slip so easily. What is happening upstairs that they’re not telling her? “So you must know something about her.”

“She’s . . . been a formidable adversary. Resisted my early wards. She’s looking for something. I don’t know what.”

“I want you to lure her out. She’s slippery, but we know she’ll take risks to have you. We’ll catch her and make her talk. Else, you’ll kill her,” says Gabriel, nodding to Aziraphine’s sword.

_Why me_? Aziraphine barely stops herself from saying. _Why do you want me to kill her?_

“Surely Michael is more practiced with executions,” she says. Tread carefully. “I still feel unsteady on my feet.”

“You don’t need practice for this. I trust you’re still able to lift your sword?”

Aziraphine nods. What words are there for this?

“We will restrain her. You put the sword through her heart.” With that, Gabriel turns to go, leaving the room even colder than before.

* * *

This is the night she plans to find Crowley.

Uriel arrives with what Aziraphine thinks might be dinner. It’s impossible to judge the time by what’s served. Every plate is the same uninspiring fare, and Aziraphine eats only because she’s tired of being weak. There’s rarely been much comfort, let alone indulgence, to be found at the Fell estate.

The past two generations let much of the house and grounds fall into disuse as the size of the family dwindled and attitudes turned towards austerity. Since Gabriel became the family head, that attitude has been magnified.

Aziraphine has known no other way.

Before Uriel leaves, Aziraphine reaches out to her. “Can you make sure I’m not disturbed for the rest of the night?”

Uriel pauses with her hand on the door. “What are you planning, Az? Gabriel suspects you of something, you know.”

“I know. I— Tell her I need to meditate. Refocus.”

“We’ve seen that demon again. Twice now. I’ve never seen one of them so desperate. She seems careless but also hasn’t fallen for any of our traps.”

Aziraphine tries for casual. “San must be itching to go after her.”

“Michael is doing everything to hold him back. Even with demons, I’m not that bloodthirsty.” Uriel moves away from the door and lowers her voice. “You’re not planning on going after her by yourself, are you?”

Aziraphine keeps her eyes down on the sword in her lap. Uriel still, after two years, knows her so well. “Yes. But not to kill her.”

“Then why? _She_ tried to kill _you_. Worse than that—they’d have been able to claim your soul.”

“I just need to talk to her.”

Uriel’s voice turns harsh, and the only reason Aziraphine doesn’t flinch away is because of the thread of concern running through it. “Not only is that the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard, it’s directly against Gabriel’s plan.”

“Please, Uriel. She won’t hurt me.”

“What do you think she was trying to do when she attacked you? Where’s your sense gone? Az?”

“I need to trust you, Uriel. I need to trust someone here.” She’s standing to meet her sister. “When there was no one else, we had each other.”

Uriel shakes her head. “I want to protect you too. And to do that, I can’t let you go.”

“Please,” Aziraphine tries again.

“I need to tell Gabriel. You’re a danger to yourself.”

Uriel takes a hurried step towards the door when Aziraphine grabs her. “I think I love her, Uriel.”

There. The impossible confession fills the space between them.

“You’re not well. You’re confused,” Uriel says, grasping desperately for an explanation. She tugs out of Aziraphine’s grasp. “She _is_ a succubus. Their powers of suggestion and seduction are strong. If you stay here, her influence over you will weaken. You’ll be back to yourself.”

“It’s not demonic influence. I know what that feels like.”

“And so the alternative explanation is that you’re in love?” Uriel scoffs.

Though she knows what she must sound like to Uriel, the dismissive response still hurts. Aziraphine pushes forward and tries to ignore the sting. “Do you really sense that I’m under demonic influence? You of all people would know best if there was any evidence of that.”

It’s Uriel’s particular sensory gift that allowed the demons they hunted to trick her those years ago. The reason the accident happened. A minor demon. That’s what she’d said she sensed, and they’d all believed her. What else but a minor demon could fit its power into such a small vessel? They couldn’t know what they were drawing out.

Uriel sighs and puts a hand against Aziraphine’s chest. Closes her eyes. When she opens them, they glow white, and she seems to look into Aziraphine’s soul. She _does_ look into her soul. Aziraphine holds her radiance and doesn’t look away. The air reverberates with white shock, and Uriel draws her hand back with a gasp. When the light fades from her eyes, she’s staring at Aziraphine like she’s a stranger.

“You consented to sex with her. You manifested wings in front of her. You showed her the tome. You _planned_ for her to drain you.” The truths tumble out in a rush as Uriel struggles to understand them. She shakes her head. “I don’t know who you are anymore.” Aziraphine starts to speak, but Uriel holds up a hand and hushes her. She turns away as if with a headache. Light ripples across her skin and fades. Ripples again. When she speaks, it’s in a shaking voice. “You’re not lying. And from what I can sense from your truth, she’s not either.”

Aziraphine dares to let herself feel a glimmer of hope, but she’s afraid speaking will break whatever realization Uriel’s approaching.

“If you haven’t betrayed us, then the question becomes why would she betray them?”

“Let me go to her. Please. I can find out more.”

“Fine,” says Uriel. She’s now fighting the fatigue that comes with truth-seeing. “Gabriel will know what I’ve done. What do you want me to tell her?”

“Tell her you were checking my condition. Making sure there was no lingering demonic energy hindering my recovery.”

“She’ll still be suspicious. You’re weak, but your condition isn’t concerning enough to justify me weakening myself by using my sight.”

“She won’t have to feel suspicious for long.”

“I’ll let you go, but you have to tell me what you learn from her.”

Aziraphine promises.

“You realize you’ve turned everything upside down for me?”

“Yes.” Then, after a moment of consideration, she adds, “I’m sorry.”

* * *

She packs her bag to take with her just in case and belts the sword to her hip. It’s a silly look with her wrinkled contemporary clothes, and as she wanders through a cobwebbed corridor, she thinks of how many Nephilim must’ve wielded the sword through the ages in order to pass it to her. What would they think of her now?

Nephilim can’t fall in the angelic sense. They’re already human, and that makes them fallen enough, Aziraphine supposes. But that hasn’t stopped families from disowning those they deem ‘fallen.’

Aziraphine draws the sword from its scabbard and wakes its radiance just enough to provide light to see by. The walk is longer than she remembers, and water has pooled in the lowest places of the path. Eventually, the tunnel slopes upwards on a gentle incline. The stone is replaced by packed earth. A crack of light above marks the end. She sheathes the sword, unbolts the old wooden doors, pushes up, and emerges into a world of frost and moonlight.

Immediately, she shivers at the touch of the outdoors, but here’s a fresh breeze after days of nothing but dust and damp, and her skin prickles alive. White beams and a peaked roof are just visible through the trees. She hurries for it, her boots crunching over frosted leaves, breath clouding on the air. The gazebo is the same as she remembers it, although perhaps more of its white paint has flaked away over the years.

A familiar shape, blissfully unaffected by the chill, paces the gazebo. As Aziraphine approaches, all fluttery clasped hands and backward glances, Crowley turns to her.

Neither of them moves. Crowley stands in deep shadow under the cover of the gazebo’s roof, but her eyes seem to glow with an inner fire. Even from this distance, Aziraphine can see the strain in her. The hunger. The restraint. It’s obvious that she’s not fed since the fake attack in the woods.

For a brief moment, it’s evening again and Crowley is about to hunt her down. For a brief moment, she’s scared that this won’t be the comforting reunion she’d hoped for.

“You came,” Crowley breathes relief. The terrifying vision is broken. “I’ve waited here for you every night.”

Aziraphine takes another tentative step towards her. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away sooner.”

“I was so scared I’d accidentally hurt you beyond your ability to recover. I was scared I’d killed you. And that if you’d survived, your family would only make things worse for you.” All her fears come spilling out in a rush. “I thought maybe you’d decided you didn’t trust me after all and wouldn’t come. Or that if you did you’d come with—”

The ornate scabbard at Aziraphine’s hip catches the moonlight as she walks, and Crowley’s gaze darts to it. She takes a step back. A tense pause settles over them both.

“The sword is for our defense. Both of us.”

“There’s no one else here, Aziraphine. I made sure of that.”

Aziraphine tamps down an unexpected surge of frustration. Maybe it was Gabriel advancing on her like that. Maybe it was the memory of the cornfield. But she feels vulnerable, and she doesn’t want to be vulnerable. She hadn’t considered at all that Crowley would react negatively to her having the sword, hadn’t thought at all of the anxiety-fueled conclusions her mind might spin in Aziraphine’s absence, hadn’t thought of the potential insensitivity of bringing one’s ultra-demon-killing weapon to meet their demon girlfriend. Girlfriend. The word pops into her head just like that.

Aziraphine huffs, unbelts the sword, and lets it fall into the grass. She steps up to join Crowley under the cover of the gazebo, but now the demon is staring at her with wide-eyed surprise.

“You said there was no one else here. I don’t sense anyone else here either.” Aziraphine drops her bag as well and rolls the ache out of her shoulder. “What I mean is—I trust you.”

Crowley nods, everything about her face and posture turned still and solemn. Aziraphine misses the demon’s confident swagger, her flirtatious ease. If they can do this right—if they can fool their respective sides—maybe she can see that version of Crowley again.

When she gets over herself and can look properly into Crowley’s face, Aziraphine notices something wrong. Something other than the hunger. She closes the space between them and raises a hand to Crowley’s face but doesn’t quite touch. One side is slightly puffy and purpled with bruises. Her lip is split and newly scabbed over. “What happened?” she asks.

“Hastur said my pretty face didn’t do its job, so I might as well be ugly like the rest of them.”

“He _hit_ you?”

“Trust me, this is nothing considering how grandly I failed to do my job.”

“Can you not heal it?”

“Best not when Hastur’s involved. It’ll just make him worse.”

Aziraphine doesn’t feel true anger often, and when she does, it’s often a long and gradual build. However, seeing Crowley like this, trying to shrug off something so blatantly awful, makes her want to—in the demon’s words—‘go all avenging angel.’ It’s nothing unlike what her own family would do to her for her own failures, but it’s different when it’s not her. It’s different when it’s someone she cares about.

_I think I love her_.

“Look, I don’t want to talk about Hastur when I’ve not got much time with you. Haven’t seen you in five days.”

“My family has spotted you,” Aziraphine can’t help but blurt out. “They said you’ve seemed careless. Gabriel wants to—wants me to . . . ”

“What, angel?” Crowley’s hands come to rest on Aziraphine’s shoulders, all warm reassurance in the cold autumn night.

She sighs at the touch. “Gabriel wants to use me as bait. To catch you. She wants to know the demons’ plan, and she wants you dead for your obvious interest in me.”

“Well.” Crowley squeezes Aziraphine’s shoulders, and a little of that reckless smile flickers across her face. “Guess she won’t have much luck there.”

“But I need to tell them something. Gabriel suspects that I know more than I’ve let on. And then I promised my sister I’d tell her the truth. About our meeting.”

“Why would you promise her that? Why would you even tell her about us?”

“I told her I loved you. So that she would let me go.” Aziraphine forces herself to hold the intensity of Crowley’s gaze as she speaks. “And she didn’t believe me, so I let her see everything. She knows about us, and she trusts you too. She let me come here and promised not to tell Gabriel.”

Crowley is already shaking her head. “But she’s Nephilim.”

“ _I’m_ Nephilim, Crowley!”

“That’s different. You’re—you’re different.”

“My sister is too. I’ve always trusted her. She’s the only family I trust. I know her.”

Crowley starts pacing the gazebo, and Aziraphine lets her go, knowing that eventually her words will come back to her and she’ll stop. Crowley’s made two circuits when it hits her. “Wait. You _love_ me?” She makes a series of inarticulate noises. “I’m a demon and you’re practically an angel and— I’m fallen which means I can’t possibly reciprocate your feelings. You do know that? And, oh, never mind the whole—”

“Crowley,” says Aziraphine softly, and it’s enough to stop Crowley’s nervous rambling. “If you want to love, you can.”

She points to herself. “Demon. Fallen. Unforgivable,” she lists as if Aziraphine needs reminding. “Got the ability to love ripped out of us along with our grace and whatnot.”

“But you’re the reason I can manifest wings.”

Crowley blinks one of her rare blinks. “Me?”

“My inner radiance is attracted to your love, and it—” Aziraphine struggles to explain the metaphysical in concrete terms. “—reaches for you. That sense is especially overwhelming during orgasm, but if I practiced, I think I could manifest wings from a source of love.”

“Wouldn’t I know it if I could love though? How could you sense it and I not even know?”

“If our ancient knowledge was wrong, maybe yours could be too. It would be hard to name a feeling if you don’t think it can exist.”

Crowley resumes her circuit around the gazebo. When she stops, they’re at opposite sides—Crowley framed by one entrance and Aziraphine the other. “I want to keep discussing this, I do. But Dagon will be grumpy, to put it lightly, if I spend too much unaccounted-for time away. If we plan this right, we can make sure we’re able to have this conversation later.”

When Aziraphine moves to twist her ring around her little finger, she realizes the tips of her fingers are turning numb. She rubs her hands together and pockets them, but her blazer is little insulation against the cold. Crowley circles back to her like a planet pulled into orbit and, having noticed Aziraphine’s vain attempt, gathers her into a smoky embrace.

“We don’t know exactly where the relics are,” Crowley says into her hair. “And there’s no way we can get closer to the grounds because of the wards. But we’re planning to move tomorrow.”

“If you don’t have the location and you can’t get in, then how?”

“I told them you’d come back to look for me.”

Crowley’s warmth feels suddenly less comforting. “Why would you tell them that?”

“Hear me out. I have an idea that gets us both free.”

It’s when Crowley proposes possession that Aziraphine disconnects from the present. She can feel Crowley still talking to her, feel the rumble of her chest where their bodies are pressed together, feel the way her breath stirs her hair. But the words lose their meaning.

She is under the summer sun in a cornfield. She cannot move, not because of any supernatural force, but because she is certain she has witnessed her sister’s spiritual murder. She has seen the way possession uniquely breaks Nephilim. She spent months staring into the hollow eyes of her sister, waiting for her own soul to resettle in her body.

She is under the summer sun in a cornfield. She cannot move. Uriel’s empty body charges forward. In her memory, it’s always those first two steps just before she knows Gabriel breaks through the row beside them. She never sees Gabriel. It’s always her sister’s body, empty. Moving fast and slow. Bent on violence.

“Aziraphine?” Crowley shakes her gently. “Aziraphine.”

When Aziraphine comes back, the world is dark and cold. She wonders at the sudden space between her and Crowley, the way Crowley is gripping her shoulders as if to shake her awake.

“What was that?” Crowley asks, face pinched in concern.

“I thought I lost my sister.” Aziraphine puts her hands to her mouth as if to hold in the tide of awful things set loose by verbalizing the confession. “I thought I lost her, and then even when she recovered, the memory of it . . . I thought I lost her, and then I left her.”

Crowley seems to struggle over the motions for comfort. She starts sentences and then bites them off. Finally, she settles on a simple question. “What happened?”

For the first time, Aziraphine tells someone.

* * *

They’ve never even called her “mother.” To them, she has always been Gabriel, her inherited place in the family hierarchy replacing her given name. Aziraphine does not know who she was before she became Gabriel. A simple designation—MCMLXV, her birth year—differentiates her from the Gabriels that came before her. The designation replaces her middle name. She is fully subsumed into the identity of Gabriel Fell. This has always been their way.

The Fells have mastered the outward appearances of being human. They can perform their roles if needed. Aziraphine thought, for many years, that something about their connection to divinity made Nephilim colder than humans. Less able to feel the full range and depth of human emotions. If any Fell were to significantly externalize any emotion, it was because they were conscious of what they wanted to project and what they wanted to elicit as a result of that projection. It’s why Gabriel seemed cartoonish in the way she dealt with the humans who called them for help. Too friendly, too optimistic, too kind. Playing a character Aziraphine didn’t recognize as her mother.

In the aftermath of the possession, Gabriel smiles kindly and soothes. She turns her voice soft and comforting. For months, Uriel does not recover. Gabriel eventually stops attempting emotion. She prays over Uriel and anoints her with blessed oil. She etches sigils into the doorway to her room and over her bed. Uriel’s soul remains beyond. Unreachable. Traumatized out of its body. At all hours, one of them is set to watch for her spirit’s return or, more often, to make sure spirits with ill-intent don’t find an uninhabited body and make themselves a new home.

Six months later, Uriel speaks. Aziraphine is the one watching over her body when she does. They’ve been reunited mere minutes when Gabriel appears with a list of demands. Necessary ritual cleansings. A plan to build back up to her previous schedule of training. A weak body and a weaker soul endanger them all, she says.

Uriel does not relate what happened to her when she was beyond. No one mentions the possession except to hint that perhaps Uriel did not take her training seriously enough. That her soul wasn’t pure enough to repel a demonic spirit. It must have chosen her for a reason.

Aziraphine does not remember the exorcism in the corn field. Uriel’s possessed form charges her. Then, the rustle of the stalks. Gabriel’s back. Aziraphine doesn’t remember more.

Uriel’s hands shake when she restrings her bow. She trembles when she nocks an arrow. Her arrows strike wide. The practice dummy goes unharmed. Gabriel watches her, all silent judgement. Will leave her to practice late into the night.

Aziraphine creeps to Uriel’s room one night, slips into bed beside her, and puts an arm around her middle. Their breathing synchronizes. It must have been early in the morning, and just before sunlight, Uriel speaks first.

“When I was in the beyond, I knew how to come back,” Uriel whispers. “I just didn’t want to.” She turns over to face Aziraphine in the dark. “You understand, don’t you?”

Aziraphine nods.

“I wish I’d had the strength to stay away. I wish I was allowed to be weak. Just this once.”

* * *

It’s late when Aziraphine is done, and her body feels as exhausted as if she’d just returned from a hunt. Two years. Two years away from the Fell estate. Two years to be a normal person, to attempt to build the comfort and security she was denied her entire life. In a matter of days, all of those reserves are used up.

She’s not sure how long Uriel can cover for her. She’d best get back if she doesn’t want to ruin their chance at enacting their plan.

“I never knew that’s what made you leave,” says Crowley. She still sounds careful, quiet. Unsure how to move forward, unsure of how to hold knowledge so fragile and sharp-edged.

Aziraphine curls her toes in her boots. Realizes they’ve gone very numb from the cold. “How would you?”

“I guess I didn’t expect something so . . .”

Aziraphine is shaking her head, processing something for herself. “I think your idea would work.”

“It’s not something I’d ask, knowing what I do now.”

“Tell me everything again,” says Aziraphine, focused now.

Crowley does. Aziraphine nods along, makes suggestions. “You can miracle objects in and out of existence, right? I’ve seen you do it.”

“Yes, but they’d sense if it was something I’d made. It’d have a sort of demonic _something_ about it.”

“What if I bless it? Would that be enough to make them think it was the real thing? Would it cancel out the fact that you’d made it?”

Crowley makes a series of noises again as she thinks. “It’d help to see the real thing. So I at least have an idea of what I’m fabricating.”

Aziraphine retrieves the sword and lays it at Crowley’s feet. “Try this one.”

They both settle on either side of the sword. Crowley traces the air above it with her hand as if it will help her memorize the dimensions and artistic flourishes. She’s careful not to touch the relic itself. Neither of them know what would happen if she did. Aziraphine knows that injuries inflicted by the relics will result in the true death of a demon, but there’s never been an opportunity to see what would happen were a demon merely to hold one of the relics. Would it hurt but not kill? Would nothing happen at all if there were no mortal wound? Her time with Crowley continually reveals more gaps in their knowledge.

“Got it, I think,” says Crowley, and in her hand, she’s suddenly holding a sword that looks eerily like Aziraphine’s. However, even in the dark, Aziraphine can see the glaring omission.

“It’s missing the inscription,” she says. The grooves of ancient text—the representations of the angelic tongue itself—are absent from the spine of the blade.

“Yeah,” Crowley says, drawing out the word. “I think it’s actually written into the laws of the universe that demons can’t speak or write in the angelic language. Guess trying to reproduce it counts as writing. Good thing we don’t have any of the tomes to check the authenticity against. Here, your turn,” says Crowley, handing over the fake sword.

Aziraphine takes it and is surprised to find it perfectly balanced, if a little lighter than her own. “This feels good in the hand,” she says, almost launching into praise of Crowley’s craftsmanship. She refocuses, holding the sword up in both hands, palms facing upward. She tries to ignore the prickle of discomfort from being out in the cold so long inadequately dressed.

She closes her eyes, reaches for her light, and whispers a few carefully chosen angelic phrases—most have been lost to time with the exception of those used for true blessings—over the blade. It’s not an easy language; it feels closer to singing than speaking and requires her to call on her light to approach anything close to correct pronunciation. She pauses to consider her choices so far and adds one more for effect.

“What’s that last one?” asks Crowley, sensing it.

“Just a little sparkle to make it feel Good,” says Aziraphine.

“Feels like a giant ‘stay back’ sign.”

“Will it seem more authentic?”

Crowley’s mouth twists into something like a grimace, and she takes the blade back with apprehension. There’s a visible spark when her hand meets the hilt, and she startles, clenching the thing tighter as if daring it to try that again. “Very. Feels angelic if nothing else.”

“Take this to them. If they believe you’ve drawn me into some trance that allows you to influence me, maybe they’ll let their guard down when they come for the relics. There’s three more. My sister’s bow, my brother’s axe, and my mother’s rapier. Do you think you can make something based on illustrations alone?”

“If they’re detailed enough.”

“They are.” She swallows. “To avoid detection by the wards, it’s probably best if you’re not in a demon’s body. So—you’ll have to possess me before we return to estate grounds.”

“Only if it’s something you think you’re ready for.”

“I am,” Aziraphine says, feeling for the spiritual shadow of her wings.

“We don’t know for sure how it’ll affect you,” Crowley reminds.

“Uriel’s soul was forced from her body. But for a moment, both souls existed together. If we don’t oppose each other, it should work. And—my light seems to like your energy.” 

When they stand to leave, swords in hand, Aziraphine pauses. There’s an ache in Crowley, a desire, but she won’t move to fulfil it. She’s waiting for Aziraphine. She steps back into the aura of Crowley’s warmth, and the look on the demon’s face strikes her. She wants to hold this look. It seems special, to see Crowley’s want so plainly, when the demon is the one who can so effortlessly sense hers.

Aziraphine kisses Crowley, and when she does, she reaches for that feeling Crowley will not or cannot name. Light surges into form behind her, and when they break their kiss, they’re bathed in the ethereal light of Aziraphine’s wings.

“You were right,” says Crowley, and Aziraphine can see once again, just like in the restaurant, that Crowley’s understanding of herself is shifting before her.

“It feels so easy now,” Aziraphine says.

Years of tortuous discipline and denial to discover that it’s warmth and connection—not punishing asceticism—that unlocks her higher self. She wills a single feather to fall free. Its light fades as it flutters to the ground but it’s still radiant white. She tucks it into the inner pocket of Crowley’s blazer, a promise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as always, for reading! I really value all your comments and kudos.


	6. An Ascent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! Most plot things are wrapped up here.

When the sword chooses her as its new wielder, Aziraphine is seven years old. It is heavy to her—and not because she is a child and not because she is only used to her training sword. Even though she is young, she can sense the weight of all the generations who held it before her, knows the burden of wielding an angelic and eternal object with a finite, human body.

The first thing that alerts her to the sword’s presence is a gentle hum. She hears it first, faintly, from the sparring room as she moves through her stances. It sounds like a distant choir, she tells Uriel. She does not say that the choir’s voices are not human. There are certain things she already knows one does not say around her family unless they want to cause alarm. These voices are not human, but they are not _bad_. She knows what evil feels like. That is the first lesson any Nephilim child learns. Families keep bound cursed or possessed objects to show their youngest, to tune their senses with something that—if handled correctly—is mostly harmless.

So Aziraphine knows there are voices that only she can hear and knows they are not evil. She does not know the words they speak.

When she finds the source, she does not know where she is or how she got there. It is as if she’s entered a deep trance and awoken on the other side of it. She stands before a pedestal. On the pedestal is a sword. She knows, intuitively, that all the voices she’s heard belong to the sword. She wants to touch it; it pulls at her. Her hand hovers inches away from the hilt when there’s the distinct click of Gabriel’s boots behind her. She whirls to face her mother.

“I’m sorry.” The words tumble from her mouth even though she doesn’t know where she is or what she was about to do or what it would mean for her to touch the singing sword. She thinks Gabriel will punish her. This seems like the kind of thing someone would be punished for. Though her question was wordless, it doesn’t matter. Gabriel does not want her asking them.

Gabriel says nothing. Only nods towards the door she’d silently entered through. Aziraphine had only heard her steps when Gabriel had decided she wanted her to hear them.

Aziraphine slips past her, face burning with shame. She is certain she will be punished. She just doesn’t know how severely or by what means. So when Gabriel leads her back to the sparring room and places the practice sword in Aziraphine’s hand, she stares. Gabriel must be leading up to something, Aziraphine thinks, but her mother merely says, “You’ve practiced only one hour.” Then, as she has so many other times, she leaves Aziraphine alone.

Over the next weeks, Aziraphine continues to find herself inexplicably drawn to the sword, turning up before it with no memory of how she got there. Each time, Gabriel finds her just before she touches it. She is never punished.

Aziraphine doesn’t know what it all means—that this sword is obviously important and her mother doesn’t want her near it yet never punishes her for abandoning her studies to find it.

The day she finally lays hands on the sword, the chorus is chanting, its rhythm insistent. Her fears of punishment and her mother are wiped from her mind. There is just her and the voices and the sword. When she grasps it, there is no fanfare. No burst of light. The voices fade as if with a contented sigh, and she suddenly has a sword and still no answers.

However, when she wanders upstairs, sword in hand, she finds that the estate has changed in one subtle but meaningful way. She can understand the inscriptions in doorways, on all the ancient objects in glass cases, below the paintings of angels. Some of them, she realizes, are names. She’s stumbling over the pronunciation of one, feeling like a child just learning to read all over again, when the click of Gabriel’s boots sounds on the old wood floor.

“I-I just—” she starts, stumbling to find an explanation for why she’s abandoned her studies and taken a holy relic—that’s suddenly obvious to her now—out of safekeeping in the crypt.

“I see that it was, in fact, destined for you,” says Gabriel.

On a family visit to the England estate, an aunt tells her that she is one of the few Nephilim to ever hear their destined relic sing to them so young. She is entrusted with one of the last remaining tomes.

Not even this accomplishment changes Gabriel’s attitude towards her. She continues to feel unworthy. She does not even know to think the word _unloved_.

* * *

The sword glows in her hand as she descends back into the earth. She’s kept her wings. It’s cold, and she fluffs them around herself to trap what little body heat she still has. Between the radiance of her wings and the sword, Aziraphine is the lone source of light for a long stretch of time.

Uriel is pacing in front of Aziraphine’s door when she rounds the corner into candlelight. Her sister stops short and stares at her for a moment as if surprised that she’s returned.

“It’s one thing seeing them through the truth-memory and another to see them in person,” Uriel says eventually. “Not even Gabriel has four.”

Aziraphine sheathes the sword and needlessly adjusts her belt as if her actions will help her sidestep thinking too hard about Gabriel. She draws her wings in close as if suddenly shy of them.

“So what happened?” Uriel asks, drawing her into the room and shutting the door behind them.

“We’re going to give them fake relics,” Aziraphine says. “It’ll spare Crowley and make the demons think they have an advantage they don’t.”

Aziraphine explains this part of the plan in detail, but Uriel, shrewd as she is, prompts, “And the part of this that worries you?”

Aziraphine eases herself onto the bed with a sigh and dismisses her wings. She realizes just now that she’s not slept yet, and it’s nearly morning. “They think Crowley has influence over me and expect she can infiltrate the estate.”

“That’s not possible. You know that. They know that. Gabriel herself ensured the borders are unbreakable.”

“Not if I shield her.”

Uriel understands immediately. She sits in the chair across from Aziraphine’s bed, and it creaks under her slight weight. She rests her forearms on her knees, and suddenly she seems just as tired as Aziraphine. “As far as we know, there’s never been a benevolent, symbiotic possession in the history of humankind.”

“I know,” says Aziraphine.

“If you’re worried, you shouldn’t do it,” Uriel says. It’s soft, but it’s a warning. _If you don’t trust_ , she implies.

“I don’t want to scare you is all.” _You’re the only family I have_.

“As long as you’re safe, what would I have to be scared of?”

Aziraphine doesn’t expect the reply, and it eases some of the knot in her chest.

“I expect Gabriel will want me to bring you breakfast soon,” Uriel says. She looks to the door but doesn’t move.

“Why does she really want to keep me here?” Aziraphine asks. To literally keep her in the dark.

“She knows you’re not telling her something. She knows Crowley wants you—though I don’t think she knows the precise reason. And she knows that capturing Crowley will get her that answer. Get both of you to talk. If you’re together . . . all the better for her, really.”

_I want you to lure her out_ , Gabriel had said.

Aziraphine nearly mirrors Uriel’s posture. “Right. I’m the bait. And doing exactly what Gabriel wants me to.”

Uriel’s smile is grim, a familiar expression they’d often shared over their years at the estate.

“There’s not another option for Crowley.”

Aziraphine thinks. Her phone was missing from her things when she woke, and in any case, reception has never been good this far out and entirely impossible in the basement levels of the estate. They never even bothered wiring these levels—hence the lack of electric lights or warm showers.

This all seems increasingly purposeful. Calculated.

She should have expected as much from Gabriel.

“Do you think she can . . . hear us?” Aziraphine asks.

Uriel shakes her head, but the fact that she doesn’t speak doesn’t give Aziraphine much reassurance.

“She chose you to visit me down here for a reason,” Aziraphine says, the sinking feeling in her stomach growing.

“We’ve always been close.” Uriel sighs and sits back in the chair, coming to her own realization. “I shouldn’t have let you go. That’s what she wanted _me_ to do. To make us both think we were safe, in a way.”

They sit in miserable silence until Uriel forces herself to her feet. “I want to follow you this time. When you leave,” she whispers.

“She’s trying to show us that we can’t leave. Not really. That we can’t exist happily out there with normal humans.”

“You did it,” Uriel says.

“What does it matter if we can always be summoned back?”

Aziraphine has not often thought of the penalty for ignoring a summons because it’s not something she’d even considered before now. They’re told of the repercussions once, and children speak of it only in whispers after. If they want to abandon their calling, then they must also give up their connection to the ethereal and become human. It is excruciating to have the connection severed, they’re told, and it doesn’t happen quickly. One can only be shut off from their light in a several-day ritual, and on the other side of it, their life is shortened and they’re left with the eternal sense that something is missing.

Uriel doesn’t answer, and Aziraphine knows they’ve had the same thought.

“Whatever she expects, she won’t expect me to invite possession,” Aziraphine says.

“She won’t,” Uriel agrees, and suddenly the thing they’ve always feared becomes their hope.

* * *

As closely as Nephilim are anchored to the divine, they do not necessarily follow any human religions, having their own records of history and spiritual knowledge. They possess the power and protection of their ancestors, the angels who walked on earth and led half-human lives.

Nephilim rarely speak of God. In the direst situations, one could call on an angel to intercede on their behalf. A direct messenger to the Almighty.

Aziraphine has never called on her namesake. She thinks—hopes—they must like her. They did call her to her destined relic so soon. She doesn’t know what this implies. That they’d wanted to spend more time with her over her comparatively short life? What must they have thought of her leaving her sword—and by extension, her calling—behind?

She closes her eyes. Remembers how to take a deep breath. She has been starved for them, unable to let her mind or body rest.

Uriel doesn’t appear with her meal. Aziraphine knows it’s morning. Soon, she estimates that noon has slipped by. No Uriel. No meal.

She still hasn’t slept, and at this point, she’s unable to.

She breathes. She thinks of her namesake. _I exist because you fell in love with a human. If I love a demon, will you understand? Will you still protect me? Could I disappoint you too?_

The door creaks open. Finally, it must be Uriel—

Aziraphine opens her eyes to meet Gabriel’s gaze.

“Talking to someone?” her mother asks. She tries to soften the question with a smile.

“My angelic aspect,” Aziraphine replies honestly.

Gabriel steps into the room and pulls her coat tighter around herself. “A bit chilly down here,” she says.

No matter how many clothes she wears, no matter how many blankets she bundles around herself, Aziraphine never feels quite warm. She doesn’t say this. When has anything ever come of voicing a need?

Gabriel always has a point, and Aziraphine waits for her to reach it.

“If it weren’t in your best interest, you know I wouldn’t do this,” says Gabriel, settling on the bed beside Aziraphine and smoothing a hand over her unruly curls.

She forces herself not to withdraw from the motherliness of the gesture.

“The demon who attacked you—we haven’t seen her recently. I want you to come upstairs. See if anything about her behavior changes once she knows for sure that you’re here.”

Aziraphine nods, and Gabriel, apparently satisfied, leaves. When Aziraphine has stuffed her few belongings back into her bag and steps into the corridor, she finds the door to the upper floors swung wide, sunlight spilling down the steps. She feels as if she is in a dream when she ascends, relishing the solidity of each step up into warm, fresh air.

The view of the hall from the top of the steps is exactly how she remembers it, and she pauses here on the threshold. The house is utterly silent. None of her family is to be seen. This solemn hush has always pervaded the Fell estate, the only sound the occasional creaking of the old wood floors. She remembers even as a child being afraid to disturb the quiet, memorizing the places she could step so that no one would even hear her footsteps.

Muscle memory takes over now as she enters her childhood home for the first time in years. She finds the silent places in the wooden boards, stepping fast and light, realizing that she doesn’t want to be seen. The doors to the rooms she passes are shut and locked. She still doesn’t know what’s behind most of them.

The grand entryway is bathed in a rainbow of soft light. Up on the first landing, the glow of evening sun through the stained-glass window dazzles her. It has always been her favorite thing about the building, this depiction of an angel rising up from the earth. She climbs the stairs and pauses in front of it, taking the moment to center herself. She knows Gabriel will be waiting for her.

Her room is on the third and final floor. Gabriel spies her from where she stands in the bedroom doorway at the top of the stairs. She’s looking into the room as if through the window on the opposite wall and steps aside to let Aziraphine pass.

This room feels giant compared to the closet she’s been shut away in for the past week. Giant even in comparison to her studio apartment.

Her apartment. Her daily ritual of brewing tea upstairs and walking down to open the bookshop. She’s surprised to feel something like homesickness spread through her at the thought and forces it down. If she doesn’t stay firmly rooted in the present, she’s worried she won’t have the strength to make it back there.

Nothing about her childhood room has changed. There’s the ancient four poster bed with no curtains. The heavy desk made of some dark wood. An imposing wardrobe in a similar style. The soft blue linens she’d picked out as a young teenager are the newest thing in the room and seem at odds with the heaviness of the furniture.

The curtains are thrown open, allowing sunlight to stream through. Aziraphine wonders if they have been that way since she left or if Gabriel just opened them. She sets her bag down at the foot of the bed and goes to the window. With her back to Gabriel, at least she doesn’t have to fight her expression into something neutral.

“Have dinner with the family tonight,” Gabriel says from the doorway.

Aziraphine turns the ring on her little finger once, twice. She looks down at the stretch of land she can see from her window. Is Crowley out there? Does she see her?

“I don’t have much of an appetite,” Aziraphine lies. If this is the only thing she’s safe to openly refuse, she will refuse it. She’s very hungry, especially for something other than hard bread, flavorless potatoes, and colorless vegetables—foods that, Gabriel says, force one to turn inward and strengthen the spirit. However, all Aziraphine can see it as is a punishment for leaving, for being a less than obedient daughter. Gabriel has her back, and she will make her regret leaving, make her believe that comfort has made her soft.

If she is soft, she is not worthy—of her sword, of her name, of her identity.

She only knows Gabriel is gone because of the click of her heels retreating down the hall. Briefly, she wonders if this is what Gabriel wanted her to do. To put her in a place where she would deny herself something she needs. To make herself weak.

Eventually, the house is quiet again. She presses a hand to the window, looks for red hair and a slip of black amid the autumn leaves.

* * *

It’s been dark for hours when Aziraphine decides it’s time to leave.

She’s seen none of her family the rest of the day. Not even Uriel. If a family dinner did happen, it was managed in utter silence.

It’s as if the house has been emptied.

She slips into the dark hallway and traces her fingers along the wall, counting each doorway she passes until she comes to Uriel’s. It’s closed to but not quite shut. She pushes it open.

A single candle lights the room. Uriel sits in front of her mirrorless vanity, bow in hand. She lifts her head when Aziraphine enters.

“She wants us ready for tonight. Won’t say for what,” Uriel whispers.

“Of course.”

Uriel stands. “Keep her close.”

Aziraphine squeezes her sister’s hand. “I want you to come with us. When we leave.”

Uriel nods. Aziraphine forces herself to let her sister go. Hopefully not for the last time.

* * *

Crowley is waiting for her at the gazebo, and this time Aziraphine can sense other demons lurking at the edge of her awareness. She’s left her sword behind this time in service of maintaining their lie and barely stops her hand from instinctively going for the absent weapon at her hip.

She needs to warn Crowley about Gabriel. They need to be careful. She did not expect their audience.

As she approaches, Crowley gives the barest shake of her head, a warning not to say anything that would give them away. Aziraphine can’t say that she already knows.

When Crowley finally detaches herself from the deep shadows, Aziraphine thinks the concern on Crowley’s face alone will give them away. Hunger seems to have etched itself deeper into the lines of her, become an immutable quality of her. She walks with hunger, sees with hunger. The pressure of it beckons Aziraphine closer. She knows this is not conscious on Crowley’s part, knows that this is distinct from her aura. Sometimes the body acts apart from the self.

They meet on the frosted leaves. Part of Aziraphine can’t help but note how inadequately Crowley is dressed for the weather, how impractical her heels and her silk blazer seem for what they need to do. Not that clothes or cold could faze her—and she won’t be in her body long anyway. Aziraphine’s breath leaves visible puffs on the air. Crowley apparently isn’t breathing at all. The demon takes both Aziraphine’s hands in hers, and the tenderness in the gesture spikes worry in Aziraphine. The other demons will know won’t they?

Crowley draws her down to the frozen ground, and in a moment, Aziraphine understands why.

One moment, she is herself. One consciousness in the only body she has ever known. The next moment, the world’s tilted on its side and she’s staring into Crowley’s empty eyes. She tries to move and realizes she’s fallen on her side. She pushes herself back to sitting and is able to take in the full reality of Crowley’s lifeless sprawl. The sight confuses her.

Then, there’s something like an incorporeal tap on her shoulder, much like how Crowley had signaled her presence in the woods. _Over here_ , comes Crowley’s voice, and it feels as normal as one of her own thoughts. _Well, not_ over _so much as_ in _. Ha._ Crowley sighs, seems to stretch out within Aziraphine’s body, and some of the tension Aziraphine had sensed in her before eases. _Easier not to be alone in my body when I’m feeling like this_ , Crowley says.

Aziraphine’s body stands up without her, and it’s not a _bad_ feeling, just odd. She lets Crowley move, not wanting to interrupt her and risk something unpleasant. _Hastur will think I’m vain, but—_ Crowley easily lifts her own body—suddenly and conspicuously cool to the touch—and caries it over to the gazebo. Aziraphine wonders at her sudden strength. She’s seen possessed people exhibit inhuman strength, but she knows her own abilities, and she’s not sure if it will stop being strange to witness her own body leisurely doing things she’d struggle to otherwise. As Crowley props her body upright against one of the gazebo’s wooden posts, Aziraphine realizes why Crowley’s body feels so unusually cold. The heat has followed Crowley’s spirit and is with Aziraphine now, warding off the autumnal chill. For once, she doesn’t feel the cold at all.

_Lead the way_ , Crowley says, and it’s like she’s handed over the metaphorical steering wheel to Aziraphine and moved back. Aziraphine feels as if she needs to reacquaint herself with her own limbs for a moment, and then, stiffly, she turns them back towards the estate. The demonic presence she’d sensed fades, as if they were only waiting to see if Crowley could do as she’d said she would.

Aziraphine imagines a bubble of light into being around the part of her that is suddenly Crowley, and they pass through the wards without so much as a glimmer of warning.

A prickle of emotion ripples through her, too quick to identify. She belatedly realizes that it’s Crowley’s and not her own.

_Remember when I said Gabriel wants to use me to catch you?_ Aziraphine says, pulling the old doors shut above them. She expects to be plunged into complete darkness, but having Crowley with her alters her vision. It’s not necessarily brighter, but she simply knows the boundaries of the space around them.

_Yes_ , says Crowley, her wariness winding through Aziraphine.

_She has plans tonight as well. I don’t think she knows any specifics, but she’s hoping that letting me think I’m safe will reveal something._

Aziraphine feels rather than hears Crowley’s grumble. _And what’s your plan when we encounter her?_

Aziraphine hesitates. _Gabriel doesn’t know that I can access my wings either_. _Is there anything . . . unharmful that you could do to buy us time?_

_Could induce sleep paralysis? That’d be a single-use trick though. If they’re on guard it won’t work, so we’ll have to be sure about when._

_How long would it last?_

_If I’m not around to maintain the effect? They’ll fight it off and we’ll have a minute at best._

Not good odds. Both of them think it and neither of them says it.

_And your side?_ Aziraphine asks.

_They love the sword—by which I mean it creeps them out but they’re glad to have it. Definitely redeemed myself with that one. Got them a way in where there wasn’t one before._

_And the whole eating-my-soul thing?_

_Once I get the relics, I’ll have leverage. It’s not uncommon for a demon to be permitted to claim a soul for themselves as a reward. If I want to wait until your natural death, that’s my business._

Her natural death. Crowley’s easy explanation nearly triggers an existential crisis on the spot. It bothers Aziraphine that Crowley has had to consider it in this way, that her death is some inevitable loophole within whatever infernal code demons order their actions by. It taints whatever future discussion they need to have about immortality and what each of them want from this relationship they’ve fallen into—if they both survive tonight.

_Your bubble doesn’t shield me from your doomsday thoughts, you know_ , says Crowley, attempting and failing at her usual levity. When Aziraphine says nothing, Crowley continues, _I have no intention of getting us exorcised or worse. We’re both getting out of this, and I promise we’ll talk about this then, yeah? When we’re safe. For now, compartmentalize. It’s what’s kept me alive since whenever B.C. Trust me. It works._

They’re at the basement door that leads into the house proper. Aziraphine finds her breath again, squashes all her doomsday thoughts into a dark corner, and moves them forward.

The small climate-controlled archive is on the first floor. They keypad lock is shiny and new in contrast to the original wooden door. It beeps with each keypress, a small sound that seems unbearably loud in the still darkness. She listens for the mechanical whir of the lock sliding free and opens the door just enough to slip inside before closing it behind them.

Flipping on the lights reveals floor-to-ceiling shelves lining each wall. A long table and rack of scrolls dominate the center of the room. Aziraphine retrieves the third of the four scrolls and spreads it flat on the table, revealing detailed illustrations of a rapier, a bow, and an axe.

At her touch, blue script shimmers to life around each illustration, every block of text tied to lines that indicate a single angelic rune inscribed into one of the relics. Sensing Crowley’s question, Aziraphine says, _English translations for each rune._

_Looks like angels are a verbose lot_ , Crowley says, ignoring the shimmering text and tracing Aziraphine’s hand over the illustrations. Judging. Estimating. Imagining.

A bow appears atop its illustrated version. Crowley adjusts some of the flourishes before moving on to the axe and finally, the rapier. These replicas are just as impressive as the sword. _Just enough angelic aesthetic to fool whoever wants to inspect them closer and knows what they ought to look for_ , says Crowley. _Your turn._

Aziraphine lays down the same series of blessings as she bestowed on the sword, and when she’s done, Crowley glances around at the shelves. “Anything here that could pass as a tome?”

If there could be a haven at the Fell estate, this small family archive had been the nearest thing for Aziraphine. Out of her siblings, she was the only one who spent any voluntary time here, often lingering after her studies to read things that hadn’t been assigned to her. She’d spent a particularly boring summer in her teens entertaining herself by cataloguing and reshelving everything they had. She’s thankful for that work now.

“I know the perfect thing,” she says, approaching the wall of shelves opposite the door.

Penned by a forgotten woman mystic in the middle ages, the book she selects is actually one of her favorites. Its details on occult and ethereal subjects are correct a small fraction of the time, impressive for anything written by a human but not anything that demons wouldn’t expect Nephilim to know. Collected by a previous family head more for the sake of preserving the history of demonology than for any enlightenment it might provide, it’s not dangerous in the wrong hands. Still, she’s hesitant to part with the nameless woman’s book. Already so lost to history, this work could be the last remaining proof of the woman’s life and her work.

_Can you make a copy of this?_ she asks.

Crowley makes a thoughtful noise. _Books are more complicated. I could replicate the material of it, but the text would need to be copied down page by page._

_No time, then_ , Aziraphine thinks, attempting to make peace with handing such a treasure over to people who won’t appreciate it. She smooths a hand over a vellum page and feels wrong even handling the book without gloves.

Before she can get too attached, she places the book in her bag, sets the room back as she found it, and returns to the hall with the trio of weapons—the bow slung over her shoulder and the rapier and axe in either hand.

She half expects one of the locked doors to suddenly open as she passes. They do not. The house remains eerily silent, even for the Fell estate. The ground itself is holding its breath, and Aziraphine’s own comes shallow. She grips each weapon in her hands as if she might use them if startled. Crowley is quiet as well. Even she is past the point of witty quips.

In the basement, Aziraphine expects Gabriel around every corner. Each time, they meet only more candlelit gloom. They are back to Aziraphine’s chosen exit corridor when Crowley speaks.

_It’s no good that your people’ve waited this long. Hastur will be just into the trees. I don’t want an all-out fight._

_That’s not what Gabriel wants either. She doesn’t care about the demons at all, not anymore. She cares about me and what my choices mean for her._

_She’s the same as every other insecure power-grabbing duke in Hell, sounds like_ , says Crowley. _Do you really not want me to go one step above ‘unharmful’?_

_I’ve already done enough to get me disowned_. Aziraphine doesn’t elaborate on what that would mean for her. Doesn’t want to think about what will happen when news of what she’s done spreads to the main house. _Compartmentalize_ , Crowley had said.

_Look, I can ditch my body_ , says Crowley _. If it comes down to it, can you fly us out?_

_But then everyone will know, Crowley! Everyone will know about us._

Nausea threatens to sweep through her. The axe and rapier are sweaty in her grip.

Crowley pushes Aziraphine out of the way, and just like that, the physicality of her panic vanishes.

_Find your wings and concentrate on that_ , says Crowley. She breathes for Aziraphine, deep cleansing breaths. Wills her heart back into a resting rhythm. _We’ll make it out of this. I promise you._

Crowley reaches up for the door, and Aziraphine feels the rough, weather-worn wood against her palm.

They emerge into crisp moonlight.

A demon looms at the tree line. Even in the dark, Aziraphine can see their soot-streaked coat, the scorched hem of it. White hair sticks up from their head like a deranged doll. Crowley strides her body towards them with a confident swagger Aziraphine doesn’t feel. They pass through the wards for the final time, and Aziraphine lets the protective bubble around Crowley fall.

“Got the goods,” Crowley calls out, twirling the axe and rapier in Aziraphine’s hands with a flourish. It’s truly Crowley’s voice that comes out of Aziraphine’s body, though it feels disconnected from her lungs and throat and tongue. More a projection than regular corporeal speech.

The demon steps forward and with them comes the pungent odor of sulphur. This must be the demon who appeared in her apartment days ago and threatened Crowley. Now closer, Aziraphine can see all the grotesque boils dotting the demon’s skin, the slick creature that moves in their hair. Aziraphine is thankful that Crowley is in control. She’s never stood so casually near a demon like this, and her impulse is to skewer them with the rapier as soon as possible.

Instead, Crowley hands the book and all three weapons over into the demon’s gloved and waiting hands. They hold the book under one arm and immediately wrap the false relics in a length of grubby dark cloth.

“Disturbing stuff, this,” they mutter as they bundle the weapons out of sight. Their voice is hoarse as if from decades of smoke. “I hate to say it, especially to you, but our master will be pleased with your work.”

Crowley dips Aziraphine’s body into a mocking bow. “I’m going back for my body. Don’t wait up.”

A hole opens amid the shadows. “Not to worry. Didn’t plan on it,” the demon says before vanishing into the void.

The air immediately feels clearer, less oppressive. Aziraphine thinks for a moment that she might sigh relief—and turns to find Uriel’s bow trained on her. Michael and San, her brothers, step up from behind Uriel, and suddenly there’s the cold tip of steel pressed warningly into Aziraphine’s back. The true rapier. Gabriel. Aziraphine freezes.

Uriel steps forward, bow still drawn. She’s only a few paces away, and Aziraphine knows Uriel has never needed to be this close to hit her mark. Her brothers move with her, eager for a hunt that will surely not last long.

_Are you_ sure _about Uriel being on your side?_ Crowley asks.

_Yes._

“In need of an exorcism, it looks like,” Gabriel says from behind them, and Aziraphine wishes, for once, that she could see her mother’s face. “What is your name, demon?”

“Hastur,” Crowley supplies.

The tip of the sword presses closer. “Is that true?” Gabriel asks. “If you lie—and my daughter will know if you do—I’ll make sure you lose your vessel.”

Fury blazes through her first—Crowley’s emotion. Aziraphine’s own muted response chases it like ice water. Too slowly, she realizes. _She’s_ the vessel. Her mother would threaten to maim her—kill her?—just to antagonize a demon.

Gabriel has threatened many things during her life, but her approach has always been subtle and never anything so violent as what she suggests now. Even from Gabriel, this feels like a betrayal, and Aziraphine struggles to process it even as her mother holds her at sword point. Crowley’s retort builds like acid in her throat.

Thankfully, Uriel’s answer is quick, her eyes bright with truth-sight. “The demon speaks truth,” she lies.

“Then that means you must have a reason to care for this body. You haven’t destroyed the soul inside, so you must care for it as well.” A pause. Gabriel is waiting for something. A confirmation of some kind. Aziraphine stays quiet, couldn’t speak if she wanted, but Uriel’s carefully blank expression falls. A truth-seer caught by her own lie.

A lie that reveals a greater truth.

Gabriel continues. “Tell me how a demon makes traitors of two daughters.”

At that, radiance spears through the air near Aziraphine’s ear, and there’s a choked sound at her back. She whirls to see Gabriel clutching the shoulder of her sword arm, an arrow of light pierced through the flesh. Her mother stumbles back but doesn’t completely lose her footing. Pain and rage twist her features. She clenches the hilt of her rapier in a white-knuckled grip but can’t push through the shock enough to wield it.

“I am the family head,” she manages through clenched teeth. “The consequences of rebellion are—”

Uriel summons another bright arrow to her bow as San and Michael turn on her, and that’s when Crowley snaps her fingers. The click is louder than such a simple gesture should be, infused as it is with Crowley’s will. With the exception of herself and Uriel, everyone falls limp to the grass. Uriel, bow still drawn, trains her arrow on one neutralized target, then another, disbelieving.

Aziraphine finds her voice. “Follow us!” she calls, running for where Crowley left her body.

They find it unmoved and unharmed. If Aziraphine didn’t feel like time itself was against them, she might have been more disturbed by the fact that Crowley hadn’t closed her body’s eyes before they’d left. Aziraphine kneels beside the empty vessel and wraps one arm around the railing of the gazebo, bracing herself for Crowley’s departure. She knows she is alone because the cold closes in, because the world is darker. Crowley is on her feet too quickly, has suddenly manifested wings, while Aziraphine is still dizzy and doubled over from the loss of her. Several black feathers drift around her, and Crowley bends to offer a hand to Aziraphine. She grasps it, and for a moment, there is only this warm point of contact and the intensity of Crowley’s gaze, golden and serpentine and lovely.

Aziraphine barely has to think and her wings are unfurling into Crowley’s aura of warmth, a blossom of light.

They turn to find Uriel hanging back, staring at them. Aziraphine drops Crowley’s hand and goes to her sister. “Fly with us,” she says.

“You know I can’t make wings,” Uriel says, casting a glance back over her shoulder.

“But you’re my sister, and I love you,” Aziraphine says, drawing her into a hug. “That’s all you need to make wings.”

Uriel cautiously settles her arms around Aziraphine, returning the embrace. It’s awkward but sincere. They’ve never had the space to give or receive physical affection, have known it only in the form Gabriel bestowed and so had grown wary of it. This is different—an open way forward instead of looming entrapment.

An undefined bloom of light gathers at Uriel’s back, spreading out in a silhouette of wings before finding its individual feathers. Uriel shakes them out as if they’ve been gathering dust while they waited for her in ethereal space.

“It feels . . .” Uriel starts.

“Like you’ve always had them?” Aziraphine suggests.

Crowley appears at her shoulder. “They’ve woken up.”

The moment breaks.

Under the open night, they lift into the sky. The estate turns small below them. Uriel doesn’t look back. Aziraphine does, and she thinks it might be out of a desire to see it minimized, for the trees to cover it all and render it harmless, featureless.

Of the three of them, Crowley is most at ease in the air. When it becomes apparent they will not be pursued, at least not this night, she banks towards the city, spreading her wings to coast on the currents with the confidence of one who has never feared falling. She loops back towards Aziraphine, a graceful black arc against the dark sky, before surging forward again, charting their path. She does this a couple times, falling back to circle Aziraphine and Uriel before moving confidently ahead. If Aziraphine knew her less, if they had made this flight under less urgent conditions, she might think that she was showing off, but each time she moves back to them, it feels as if she’s drawing a circle of protection.

Her distance also grants Aziraphine and Uriel privacy to talk, should they want it.

“I’ve left everything,” Uriel says, just enough to be heard over the wind. “We’re really not going back.”

The city comes into view in the distance, a scattered spread of tiny lights.

“We’re not,” says Aziraphine. It’s a promise.

Uriel shivers and wraps her arms around herself. “In all my daydreams about flying, I never imagined it’d be so cold.”

They lapse into silence for a while before Aziraphine says, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Her sister smiles at her, and it’s a genuine and precious thing.

The high of their escape and first flight gives way to fatigue by the time they’re over the city. Not even Crowley is immune. Aziraphine doesn’t miss the uncharacteristic gracelessness in Crowley’s landing, the way she stumbles in her heels. Aziraphine can no longer feel her face by the time they alight on the rooftop of some luxury apartment building in New Eastside. They’re so close to Lake Michigan that Aziraphine can see the choppy water in the dark, thinks dazedly that she might fall into it with the way the wind pushes at her back.

“Why are we here?” Uriel asks.

A sensible question. Aziraphine tries to catch up. She’s thoroughly fatigued—physically, mentally, spiritually. As long as they are far from Gabriel and she can rest soon, she thinks she can be happy with wherever they’ve ended up.

“Thought we could stay at my place. Since I have more room than Aziraphine,” Crowley says. “You’re welcome to the guest suite, Uriel.”

Aziraphine finds herself stuck on the basic facts that Crowley, apparently, has an apartment in the city. Some luxury penthouse thing she’s never thought to mention. And that she’s inviting them to stay the night.

There’s a pool on the rooftop. Of course there’s a pool—very fancy, no doubt—though it appears closed for the season. Crowley walks by it without a glance and holds a door open for them.

“Rest and talk tomorrow?” Crowley offers.

Uriel stretches her arms above her head and dismisses her wings, moving to the door with a grateful sigh. “Sounds lovely,” she yawns, seemingly too tired to question the reality of demons owning perfectly normal, if terribly expensive, apartments.

Crowley meets Aziraphine’s gaze, and for a moment, it’s just the two of them. Just the tension in Crowley’s stance, in her eyes. Aziraphine closes the space between them, cups Crowley’s face, and kisses her as if she’s a fragile thing—and she might be. How weak has this ordeal made her?

“We should—” Aziraphine starts.

“Later,” says Crowley, though by the gleam in her eyes, the kiss has only made her hungrier. The white of her eyes is gone, and the full gold of them is mesmerizing. There’s a flash of lengthened fangs when she speaks, as if her body is slowly giving up on its illusion of humanity in order to conserve what little energy she has left. “I want you to rest first.”

* * *

The angel is shapeless, an undefined haze like light through clouds, when they first appear to her in the clear expanse. This place isn’t white, but it is clear. Yes. That’s what her mind settles on. There’s no air. Or at least there’s no wind, and she doesn’t need to breathe.

An eye blinks open, followed by several others. All are different sizes and colors and shapes. Some are not human or mammalian. Aziraphine thinks she spies a horizontal pupil. Another is vertical and sharp, and she thinks of Crowley, thinks of reaching for her in sleep, but there is only her and the angel and the clear expanse.

The sharp pupiled eye moves forward and looks down on her as if understanding that she favors it. This is the one she makes eye contact with when the angel speaks.

_I would see you move forward without fear_ , they say.

Aziraphine has the fleeting realization that this is the angelic tongue. She can understand it in full as a language, see how all its pieces fit together. Only memorized fragments and names have been passed down to them, things she could recite without knowing where one word began and another ended. This sudden knowledge of the whole is a gift not to all Nephilim but to her and her alone. A blessing.

Three pairs of radiant wings unfold from the ether, spanning the width of the infinite expanse. Their light sears Aziraphine’s eyes, and she reaches an arm up to shield her face. There’s the fleeting urge to fall to her knees in deference, but the physics of the space don’t allow for static concepts like gravity, like up or down.

_Keep only the bonds that free you_.

The ethereal light of the angel’s wings washes over her like a cleansing tide, and she thinks its radiance might cling to her forever. She is renewed in a way she’d never gain from food or rest, another smaller blessing.

When the light subsides, the vision settles her gently into her body, bearing her soul back to earth on a warm breeze. The first thing she feels is the weight and heat of Crowley’s arm across her middle and silky sheets against her bare skin.

Crowley’s bedroom is far from dark. The wall of glass opposite the bed welcomes in the glitter of city lights, and Aziraphine thinks she can see the indigo line where water meets sky.

Dawn will arrive soon. She wants to meet it.

Crowley sleeps heavily for an immortal being who doesn’t need sleep, and Aziraphine slips carefully from her grasp without her stirring. The room itself feels vast and empty, and she shivers when her feet touch the polished concrete floor. The only furniture is the bed and its side tables. Above that, an ornate gilded frame dominates the length of the wall, holding what looks like some original Renaissance-era painting Aziraphine’s never seen before. Something featuring two winged beings in an ambiguous tangle of limbs. It’s a bold look amid the stark minimalism of the rest of the room, but Crowley is nothing if not bold.

Aziraphine reaches for one of the silky black robes hanging on the back of the bedroom door and startles when she sees her right hand. Her palm glows with the energy of an angelic sigil. Her namesake’s. Propped in the corner by the door, her sword gleams faintly, safe in its scabbard. Her tome is with it. She stares between the mark and the sword, closes her fingers over the sigil, and whispers her thanks.

In all her life, she’s never been visited by an angel or granted a vision. Even for Nephilim, such encounters are rare. For this to happen to her now is the confirmation she needed.

Her family’s will—Gabriel’s will—is not necessarily divine will. Even for them, some things remain ineffable.

She slips on the robe to find the garment is very short and comprised mostly of lace, providing only the most essential coverage to be decent in front of company. Not that she’d want to wear this in front of anyone but Crowley. It’s more lingerie than anything practical.

It’s much too cold to be out on the balcony in something so thin, but for a vision of the sunrise, Aziraphine braves it. Her own clothes are in desperate need of a wash, and she doesn’t think she could bear to don them again anyway. They seem so tied to memories she wants to distance herself from as soon as possible.

She braces her forearms against the railing and waits, eyes trained on the water. Eventually, traffic picks up below, people hurrying to morning shifts all over the city. The horizon is violet, pink, orange. The first rays of sun don’t warm her, but that’s okay. She can’t feel her fingertips or her toes, but that’s okay. She smiles and finds that her lips tremble. Tears track down her cheeks, and it’s not from the wind or the cold. Her chest is a tangle of emotions, and she doesn’t have the energy to hold them up to the light, straighten them out, and identify them. Not now. So she just lets herself feel, lets them wash over her like the vision of light. And if she chokes on a sob, that’s fine. And if she wails, that’s fine.

The balcony door slides open behind her, but she doesn’t turn. Crowley presses herself to Aziraphine’s back, and when they touch, the demon’s skin is the comforting heat of fire against her chilled body. Crowley nuzzles sleepily into the crook of Aziraphine’s neck, circles her arms around her, and breathes against her skin. Aziraphine sniffs and relaxes into the scent of smoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always underestimate myself with word count when I'm planning a story. Thought I could fit this all into 30k, but that'll definitely be more like 40. The next chapter is mostly smut and tenderness! Thanks for reading! <3


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